The Good Girl
by attica
Summary: [WIP] He was a tornado and all she wanted to do was plant her feet down and grow roots. Draco/Hermione.
1. Prologue

**A/N**: written as a fic request for kureyon on LJ, who asked for an angsty Ginny/Draco/Hermione triangle, but ultimately Draco/Hermione - with an obstacle. Multi-parter. Also, just a warning: the characters might seem OOC. So if you're a stickler for that, this might not be your slice of pie.

* * *

><p>"<em>The greatest lie ever told about love is that it sets you free."<em>

- Zadie Smith, On Beauty.

ooo

**Prologue**

Normalcy after the war was an illusion – a kind of forced normalcy that barely the skimmed the froth of reality, that looked good on top but hid what was really going on at its murky bottom. For appearances, Hogwarts looked almost impeccably the same, having undergone renovations and reconstructions after the final battle so that the students could finish up their last year at school. A large portrait of Dumbledore hung in the corridor of Headmasters, often seen winking every now and then, or sucking on a lemon drop. But what was the talk of the school was the empty spot beside his, rumored to be reserved for a pending portrait of Snape.

She listened on as Ginny, Ron, and Harry continued chatting about this when she got up from her seat in the library, shoving her books into her bag.

Ron looked up at her. He had been doodling what looked like Quidditch plays on his parchment for the past hour, despite the top of it being titled _The Ten Magical Uses of Knotgrass_. "We're already _in_ the library, Hermione – where else could you be going?"

"Head duties, Ronald," she said to him, rolling her eyes. "I'll see you tomorrow at breakfast," she said, meeting eyes with both Harry and Ginny, who bid her good night. "And Ron, finish that essay. You're already on Sprout's last nerves."

With a swish of her wand, the doodles on his parchment vanished. Ron cried out in protest.

"We save the bloody world and they still expect us to do homework?" he grumbled, as she walked out.

She made her way to the Head commons, straightening out her skirt. Today had been a close one – she hadn't been aware that Ron had been snooping over her shoulder when she read his owl. It was a good thing they had both enchanted their secret notes so that if any other eyes accidentally (or not so accidentally) happened upon it, the note was enchanted to look like it had been written in some bizarre code.

He was waiting for her when she finally came in, sitting on the couch and reading a book. His robes were off, tossed on the other side of the couch, with his Head Boy badge winking at her. She used to wonder if Malfoy took the time to polish his badge every night. It winked at her an awful lot, like a blatant taunt of who she had to be stuck with for the rest of the year.

"I hope you know, literature does nothing for my libido," he said to her, when she closed the door behind her. She shrugged off her book bag and her shoes.

"Maybe you're just not reading the right kind of literature," she suggested.

He got up, carelessly throwing his book aside, and with three long strides was already in front of her. His gray eyes were always a little bit darkly tinted with that little bit of annoyance reserved just for her; that was their self-instated status of normalcy. If it wasn't one thing, it was another. And somehow, this worked for them – the fact that they didn't even like each other, not even as human beings, yet Malfoy spent little to no time in latching onto her bottom lip and slipping her knickers off with those adept thumbs of his.

She blamed it on the war. The war had sent the world and everybody in it topsy-turvy and now it had become easier for her, more than ever, to look the other way. It was just so easy to, to close her eyes and moan his name, when he was just so good at fucking her in exactly the right way she needed to be fucked, after a long and tiresome day of lectures and uprightness. Except she hardly ever looked the other way when he did that. This was because usually her eyeballs disappeared entirely, rolling to the back of her head as she came.

Their relationship hinged on a primal need, not an emotional one. The last thing either of them needed was to get involved when everybody was still scrambling to get back into normalcy – whatever that meant – and their sex was convenient. It had started during the war as an escape – a way to momentarily forget that they were constantly on the brink of their lives, teetering towards their inevitable deaths. Unlike Ron and Harry, Hermione did not have any emotional attachment to Draco. That was part of their deal. It was sex and nothing else. It was a dead-end, with no roads that led any farther. It was safe.

But here they were, in a freshly and dizzying post-war world, and they had kept with them so many relics and scars from the war – including the sex. She hated to admit it, but it had become a habit. And bad habits were always hard to break.

She cringed at the thought of anybody in school finding out about how often she and Malfoy found a broom closet to get off in. In the beginning, she scrubbed herself nightly after one of their encounters, making sure every pureblood skin cell that had rubbed off on her wasn't allowed to settle and was instead washed down the drain. Back then, she'd convinced herself that it was one-time thing. Or a three-time thing. Or even a seven-time thing. But if Hermione Granger was ever in denial, she wasn't in it for too long. She was smarter than that. She was _realer_ than that.

When Malfoy pulled her aside – and as she let him – during patrol one night in the Astronomy tower, shoving her against the wall and pulling up her skirt, she knew she had the face the facts: this wasn't going anywhere. Not until the end of the year, anyway. Not until they were rid of each other for good.

And the truth was that stranger couples had emerged from the war. Dean Thomas and Pansy Parkinson, for example. They had gone public the moment everybody found them making out amongst all of the rubble, both of their wands having long been toppled to the floor. It was honestly a little poignant, as if the end of the war marked the end of forced pretenses.

Not that she would ever consider that with Malfoy. Why would she, if she was already so comfortable loathing him?

"Don't make me wait again," Malfoy half-breathed, half-snarled to her when they finished. He kissed her, deep and rushed, his long fingers buried in her mass of hair.

"As if you could get off without me," she scoffed, her body still tingling from her climax. "I was in the library with Ron, Harry, and Ginny. I'm sorry if I can't just pop up and say, 'Got to go guys, I've got a fuck date with the Head Boy!'"

"My, my, is Hermione Granger making excuses?" He shook his head, smirking. "I never thought I'd see the day. Then again, I never thought I'd see many things." She watched as his eyes lowered and trailed over her body again. She felt herself blush, but straightened herself up with the small amount of dignity she had left. She pushed him aside and picked up her underwear.

"We still have to keep up the pretense of normalcy, at least," she said, as he stepped into his boxers. "Or else it might get suspicious that we're disappearing all the time."

"Hence the cover story of Head obligations," he dryly said to her, as if already bored with the conversation. "I think you overestimate how big of a damn people actually give about who's taking off your knickers every night. It amazes me how you fall asleep at night, buried in this delusion that people care so much over what you do." He pulled on his trousers, glancing up at her. "Newsflash, Granger: they don't."

She rolled her eyes, picking up her blouse and walking past him to her room. Before she could get there, he grabbed her arm, whirling her around to face him.

"Don't you worry, my pious little Head Girl," he said to her, his voice low and taunting. "No one will ever find out about you and me. Not unless you want them to."

She swung her elbow back, breaking free from his grasp. He was chuckling to himself.

"Fuck you," she hissed at him, turning on her heel.

"But Granger, you already have!" he called out to her, before she slammed the door.

Hermione found comfort in the fact that even though she was fucking Malfoy, she still went to bed hating him with every fiber of her being. Maybe it was right, what people said. The more things changed, the more they stayed the same.

She groaned to herself, burying her face in her pillow. She thought about what her poor mum would think if she'd found out her daughter had so willingly allowed her childhood bully to escort her to a full-fledged orgasm every night.

"I'm so sorry, Mum," she said to her ceiling.

ooo

With the end of the school year drawing impossibly close, the languid and lazy air of Seventh Year students changed. There was a hum of anticipation she heard amongst her peers – constant conversations about their futures, and what would be waiting for them after Hogwarts. They channeled most of their nervous energy into their schoolwork – a good thing, since the end of the year meant exams and even more regurgitation of information they had learned since the beginning.

She should have known it was a plan bound for failure, but she tried it anyway. She tried to avoid Malfoy and the distractions he brought with him, which didn't make him too happy. It didn't make her that happy, either – much to her chagrin. Pre-war, stress and studies brought on a very specific kind of focus and determination all on its own. Post-war, stress and studies made her as sexually-frustrated as a newly celibate teenage boy. The further she got in on her studies, the more she kicked herself for swearing off sex with Malfoy until it was all finished.

She rapped her knuckles firmly on his door, waiting. She looked down at herself. She should have worn better pajamas. It wasn't likely he was going to be tempted to jump her bones once he saw her wearing a pair of shorts that were so old and thin that they were nearly see-through (and not even in the sexy, alluring kind of way), and an old Beethoven concert T-shirt her godmother had given to her as a joke last Christmas.

He opened the door. "What do you want, Granger? I know it can't be sex, since you'd so adamantly sworn your vagina to the books until exams were over."

When she glanced behind him, she noticed that he, too, had been studying. She could see his books sprawled out on his desk, his notes organized and neat. Why wasn't he going crazy like she was? Weren't males supposed to be more sexually-driven?

"I just want to talk," she said, her throat a little dry. He quirked one blond eyebrow at her but sighed and stepped back, allowing her to come into his room.

He closed the door behind her. "I don't really have time for one of your Holier than Thou lectures, Granger. As you can see, I've got my night cut out for me. So spare me the self-righteous dawdling and cut to the chase."

So she did. She jumped him. His smirky, scowly little mouth was a great deal less annoying when it was doing more kissing and less talking. Thankfully, he got the hint. He growled against her mouth and they clumsily moved backwards, falling on his bed. With his ink-stained fingers, he pulled off her "stupidly Muggle" Beethoven t-shirt (Malfoy wasn't anything if not observant and blunt, even in the middle of passionately undressing her) and threw it across the room.

When they were finished, she found herself tangled in his sheets, covered in sweat. He collapsed beside her, breathing hard.

In the beginning they had set aside certain rules for their rendezvous. Things like no fucking in an alcove in broad daylight, no suggestive language that might even give so much as a hint of suspicion to their housemates, and no bedrooms. Funny how Hermione had been the one to establish this rule – because she considered bedrooms to be an intimate, personal place – as well as be the one to break it.

She had seen his room before, of course; brief glances whenever she needed something from him, school-related. She'd had a peek at his bed and his luxurious satin sheets, and was disturbed by how neatly made it always was. He was a vile, privileged bully that was also a bed-maker. Somehow it just made him even stranger.

"Malfoy," she said, "why is your bed always made?"

"Because," he drawled. "Because I'm a civilized human being. What, am I a prat because I like the sight of a well-made bed every morning?"

She rolled her eyes. "As a matter of fact, you are. You're a prat for many things, but the fact that you like to make your bed every morning makes the once-innocuous activity now seem incredibly prattish."

"I'm glad I can make that sort of distinction for you, Granger," he said sardonically. "It's always an off day for me when I haven't made you lose at least little bit of hope in humanity." He sat up beside her, grabbing his clothes, glancing at her. "You better get back to those books, Granger. Wouldn't want to fail out as Hogwarts' first post-war Head Girl, would you?"

He tossed her t-shirt at her face. He knew that topic hit a special nerve in her. She begrudgingly grabbed it and pulled it back on.

"Ferretface," she muttered to herself, getting off his bed. She picked up her bra and began heading out of his room as he resharpened his quill. She could feel him watching her, and she tried to ignore the way knowing that made the hair on the back of her neck stand up on end.

'_It's because you hate him_,' she passionately reasoned to herself. '_Because he's vile_.'

"Fuck you later!" he called out to her.

Some days she didn't know who she hated more – herself, for having stooped to this; or him, just for being himself.


	2. The Wedding

**A/N**: There's a part in here that was unintentionally lifted from my other fic, Leap Year – my bad! Unintentionally though. If it was intentional that would mean I was just lazy. But that is a different topic for a different day. Onwards!

* * *

><p><strong>Chapter One<strong>

THREE YEARS LATER

He was staring at her.

At least that's what it felt like, passing by the newsstands and random people on the street, all reading the latest Witch Weekly with his smug little face plastered all over it. Even at work, at her prim and proper and _respectable_ job at the firm, she'd seen ladies ducked behind that nonsensical magazine on their lunch break, enjoying a cup of tea all the while spoon-feeding themselves the rubbish that was Draco Malfoy on Witch Weekly.

"Hey Hermione," Harry greeted her, as she walked into his bar. She always relished this time of day – an hour or two before the bar was open to its adoring public and she could have a drink with Harry, without overly confident girls elbowing past her to try their hand at going home with her best friend for the night.

She could never blame them, of course. Harry Potter, along with Ron, was one of the most coveted and eligible bachelors in the wizarding world. Not only were they noble war heroes, they were successful bar-owners when they were on hiatus from playing on one of the best Quidditch teams in the world.

She sat down on a stool, heavily sighing as she shrugged off her coat.

"Long day?" he asked her. He presented her with a nice, tall glass of beer. She held onto it like a life raft. It was just what she needed.

"Quite possibly the longest," she said to him, taking one long gulp. He had some letters and bills out on the counter. And then she recognized something very familiar. "Oh no," she groaned, shaking her head as she put her beer down. "Not you, too."

"Come on, Hermione," he said to her. To comfort her, he grabbed the magazine and turned it face-down. "When have you ever seen me with a copy of Witch Weekly?" he reassured her. "It's Ginny's. She must have left it."

And then, as if on second thought, he grabbed the magazine and tossed it in the trash. She beamed up at him, before continuing to sip her beer as he went through his mail.

He pulled out one crisp envelope. It had gold and silver trimming, which meant that it was definitely very fancy, with a seal. Harry made a face, before bringing it up to his nose, smelling it.

"It smells like roses," he explained to her, before casually tearing the envelope open. As soon as he did, the letter sprang to life, and with the faint sound of a trumpet, soft tinkling music began to play.

"What the—" began Harry.

"Greetings Harry Potter," the letter trilled. "You have been cordially invited to the wedding of Dean Thomas and Pansy Parkinson, to be held at the Parkinson Manor on the blessed afternoon of Saturday, September 20th. Please RSVP as soon as possible. The bride and groom are registered at the Bewitchery Wedding Registry; Black tie and dress robes are required."

And with one last flourish and a burst of silver confetti, the envelope fell back down on the table.

"I can't believe it," Hermione said, shaking her head. "He did it. Dean proposed to Pansy." She took another long drink. Granted, Dean had seemed happy with Pansy the last time she had seen them, which had been on the last day of school, on the train. Pansy had lightened up for the most part, yet still managed to keep that aristocratic snobbery she was known for – but what did that matter? The war was over, Pansy – despite her shady beginnings – had ended up on the right side, and Dean was in love with her.

Now they were getting married.

"Well," Harry said, pouring himself a drink. "That's going to be quite an eventful wedding party, don't you think?"

ooo

The more Hermione thought about it, the more she admired Dean. Nobody knew exactly when he had fallen in love with Pansy; it wasn't like anybody had been keeping a keen eye on the blossoming inter-House relationships during the war. Like she'd said before, nobody had even known Dean Thomas thought anything pleasant about Pansy Parkinson until everybody saw them publically engaging in a game of tonsil hockey after Voldemort was defeated. And by then, as shocked as everybody was, they were too exhausted to ask questions. Everybody had been big on the second chance movement, too, for the people who had joined their side – no matter how hesitant the crossover.

After the war, everybody wanted to be optimistic. They had seen so much of the bad in people that they just wanted, for once, to believe in nothing but the good.

She knew that Dean's and Pansy's wedding would be a landmark for change. A small but significant one for Hogwarts students like her. He, after all, was a Gryffindor half-blood from a humble family and she was a daughter from an ancient wealthy family from the opposing House – this was even disregarding the murky personal history between the two. The wedding would be symbolic; it would mean the breaking of past barriers, and the solidification of the fact that moving on was possible, and that people could change – for the better.

When Hermione headed home for the night, she found her own invitation to the Thomas-Parkinson nuptials, as well as her neighbor's Witch Weekly misplaced with her mail, yet again. As she sat there with her mum's old university sweater and a cup of hot tea, staring at his brooding face, she found herself thinking about him, too. He was strangely relevant now with the news of Dean and Pansy's engagement – even if she didn't want him to be.

The last time she had seen him was on the train from Hogwarts. She remembered that look he had given her as she came down onto the platform with Harry and Ron, flustered from all of the goodbyes – not the haughty smirk she had been expecting, but something vague and even a little disconcerting. She remembered watching him from the window as the train rode on, clenching her fingers against her palms, with a tingling in her knees. Already, the growing distance between them brought her reprieve. She welcomed the opportunity to become guiltless again, to harbor no real secrets. That's what she kept telling herself.

That wasn't the only strange thing about the end of school. When exams were over, classes became less meticulous, which meant they had more time to fool around. Maybe it had been that last-minute desperation, the knowledge that their time was dwindling fast and that instant gratification would soon be farther out of reach, but their sexual relationship in those last few weeks intensified in a way she wasn't really aware it could. But that wasn't what was so strange – that was expected. It was sex, and they were teenagers of the opposite sex with nearly adjoining rooms. With that equation, a blind nun could have told her that they would have had terrifically hot sex.

It was the way he kissed her on their very last night. Deep and slow and long. He had never kissed her that way before. It still made her shiver when she thought about it now. She had become so used to Malfoy that she came to know when something was off-kilter with him, and that kiss had been one of them.

She kept that to herself, of course. The easiest way to make something disappear was to let someone know you had seen them reveal a little bit of truth in themselves. She tucked it so deep inside her so that she could properly untangle herself from him when they were done, pulling on her uniform and anxiously running her fingers through her hair, straightening herself out.

"Well," she said, a bit stiffly. "I guess this is goodbye."

The way he stood in front of her, so close without moving, made her breath hitch in her throat, in a way so different than from the mere expectation that soon her knickers would be off in a puddle of their clothes on the ground. If she hadn't buried it so fast, she might have even felt a little scared. Sad, even.

"Try not to be so vile after we graduate, Malfoy," she said to him, softly.

"Only if you try not to be so insufferable," he said back to her.

She let out a tentative breath; her eyes drawn to how close his lips were hovering from hers. Those smirky, scowly little pureblood lips of his. Oh, how she detested them.

"I still hate you," she breathed. She didn't know it but she'd closed her eyes.

He raised up one hand, gently tucking a stray curl behind her ear. She was completely frozen, unable to ignore the sound of her heart thudding in her ears.

"Good," he said.

And that had been their goodbye. A year and a half of explosive secret sex, of cramped in closets and abandoned rooms and caves, and they had said goodbye through reaffirming their long withstanding grudges. It was true when people said that the war had changed a lot of things. But there were some things she was convinced that were beyond change, and beyond repair. Things like history, and people like him, and people like her.

She held the magazine in front of her. _Keeping Up the Malfoy Empire_, it said. She hadn't even ever known they'd had an empire. She'd only thought they were ancient blue bloods that lived off of the money that their family had accumulated – no doubt, from malice, greed, and an overall disregard as to who they ruined on their way to the top – over the generations.

She sighed to herself, before throwing the magazine in the trash. If her neighbor missed it, then she would gladly pay for her to get a new one.

ooo

If they had expected anything out of Pansy and Dean's wedding, they knew it would be nothing less than extravagant. Hermione had never been to the Parkinson Manor before, but she'd heard it was only second to the Malfoy Manor, in terms of blatant wealth and uber upper-class pretentiousness. Plus, she knew exactly the kind of girl Pansy was. She was the kind of girl that asked for the moon and threw a tantrum for weeks when she only got the Milky Way.

"I'm happy for Dean," Ginny was saying to Hermione, as they waited for Ron and Harry. "Pansy seems nice enough now. She's definitely been trying to smile more, and I've noticed that when she's not scowling she looks less. . ." she paused, trying to think of the word. "Pug-faced."

Hermione looked around. The servant had told them to wait here, but all she could see was a long and empty dirt road, surrounded by a neat line of trees that had been decorated with festive twinkling lights. Thanks to the slight breeze, silver dust had already begun to accumulate on her shoes.

Last night had been Dean's bachelor party, and in honor of his old friend, Harry had closed down Hedwig's Pub just for the special occasion. He didn't exactly recount what it was they did – except the given: booze, lots and lots of booze – but he did let her know that he did think it was real.

"Dean doesn't say much," he'd told her, when she had mercifully brought over her famous Morning After tonic, "but if he says he loves Pansy and thinks she's the one, then I don't see why we shouldn't believe him." Harry gave her a comforting smile. "Quit worrying, Hermione. He knows what he's doing. Enjoy the wedding. Don't get all Mother Hen on us again."

"I didn't say anything," she muttered to him, as she twisted the top back on the tonic.

"You didn't have to, Hermione. After nine years, I think I know how to read your face just fine." He raised a mug at her. It was his MVP mug from the Cannons, complete with an animated Snitch. "Coffee?"

With a resounding _Pop!_ the boys appeared behind them, along with a few other guests. It was an older couple dressed in elegant silk and fur, barely glancing at them as they walked ahead. As they did this, a white carriage suddenly appeared. The door swung open and they gracefully climbed inside.

"What a wedding, huh?" Ron said under his breath, as they all stepped up to where the couple had been. Another white carriage appeared and they all climbed inside.

It was a five minute carriage ride from the desolate road they had been transported to, to the actual manor itself. Parkinson's manor was a thing to behold: a large mansion with upwards of around two dozen rooms. They had an elaborate white marble fountain in the front, and the green lawn had been decorated with white flowers for the wedding, complete with hired greeters.

As they stepped out, a beautiful greeter dressed in fancy dress robes – from the looks of it, a Veela – let them know that the wedding was happening in the backyard. They walked on ahead, and joining a few other familiar guests, Luna Lovegood and Angelina Johnson.

It was a surprise to come upon the main area of the wedding – extravagant, of course, with a pale silver color as her main theme – because of the overwhelming amount of familiar faces she found shifting awkwardly in their seats, both in awe and wonderment of whether they really belonged there. Towards the front she could see Seamus Finnigan, Dean's best man, waving at them, as well as Millicent Bullstrode and a few other girls from Slytherin. With her eyes still scanning the front, she distinguished one very blond head from the rest. She stepped back, turning around.

"Bathroom," she said, as her friends took their seats. "I'll be back."

She walked out of the lawn and went towards the back entrance of the manor, where a greeter let her know exactly which way the bathrooms were. "Just up the stairs, the second door to your left," he called after her, as she hurriedly leapt up the steps. She teetered on her heels every now and then, and she begrudgingly fought the urge to slip them off and walk barefoot.

She found the second door down a long corridor. She was just about to reach for the doorknob and head inside when she suddenly heard muffled yelling, coming from inside. Hermione froze.

She heard two voices – two women. From what she could hear, one was low and controlled, while the other was loud and hysterical. She recognized the hysterical voice immediately. It was none other than the bride herself: Pansy.

"Your father and I have put up a lot from you, Pansy," said the other voice. "We humored you when you started dating him, and we even went along with the engagement, thinking you'd get tired of it soon enough and change your mind. But this has gone far enough, do you understand?"

"Shut up!" Pansy screeched. "It's my wedding day, and I'm going to marry him – do you understand, Mother? I love him, and he loves me. Why is that so hard to understand?"

Hermione knew that she was eavesdropping on a very private moment. When she heard faint shuffling in the bathroom, she immediately pried herself off of the door and whirled around, heading back down the hallway, her eyes darting down to her feet.

In her hurry to get away, she walked into something – someone. Someone tall and firm that smelled like smoky firewood and pine needles, all at once. As she stumbled back, sweeping her eyes upwards, she realized that she recognized that smell. She recognized it, all right – too well, in fact. She'd once heard that smell is one of the prime triggers of memory, and when she looked up at him, smelling that distinct smell, she felt lightheaded. And then she remembered everything – precisely everything that she didn't want to.

"Still sticking to those Gryffindor habits, I see," he said to her, though his voice was without malice. He had a glass of scotch in one hand, dressed in dark dress robes with a white flower pinned to his chest. "Eavesdropping on other people's business, sticking your freckly nose where it doesn't belong."

"I had to pee," she said defensively.

His gray eyes flickered to something behind her, and he motioned for her to follow him. She didn't want to, but she didn't want Pansy to find out that she'd heard anything, so she did. She warily watched the back of his head, and counted the clicks of his shoes against the marble floors. He looked exactly the same as he did three years ago. She wondered if she looked any different to him.

She self-consciously ran her fingers through her hair.

"You're going to have to hold it," he said to her, leading them back out to the lawn. The greeter bowed to them. "The wedding's about to start."

For a brief second she felt his hand touch the small of her back, guiding her. One second, and then it was gone. When she looked up, he had passed her and was already heading down the aisle, back to his seat.

It was a minute after she'd taken her seat next to Harry and Ron that the music began to play, and everybody stood. From the distance she could see Pansy, in her flowing white dress, as she was slowly escorted down by her father, who only looked ahead with dispassion. Hermione discreetly turned to look at Dean. He was at the altar, standing proud and straight, looking at his wife-to-be like she was Christmas morning.

As she watched Pansy get married off to Dean, she felt both relief and melancholy. Relief that Pansy really did love him, and that her sticking up to her controlling mother was enough evidence in itself that she deserved Dean's wholehearted love. But she pitied her, too, for all of the things she had heard from inside the bathroom. Through it all, she was still convinced of the same thing: that the end of the war had changed some things, but not everything.

She snuck a peek at Mr. and Mrs. Parkinson, who were about as stoic as their own garden sculptures, as their daughter laughed and kissed the man she loved, all the while everyone's applause and cheers filled the air like confetti. Hermione had never seen Dean or Pansy look so happy, and it made her hopeful – in a way she couldn't recall feeling for a very, very long time.

Harry leaned down to whisper something to her ear. "See? It's a happy occasion, Hermione. They're in love."

She rolled her eyes at him, waving to Dean and his blushing new wife as they walked down the aisle, hand in hand. From across the way, she got a glimpse of Malfoy – just standing there, unmoving. A perfect marble statue.

Everybody began to go, then, following after them in a shuffle of glamorous dress robes and a large cloud of very expensive French perfume.

* * *

><p>Readers and reviewers, don't forget to do your thang! By that, I mean review. I'm surprisingly really liking the DeanPansy pairing (which was random, btw - I just needed two people to get married and somehow it turned out to be them), I think it's kind of cute. Kind of a parallel to Draco/Hermione, don't you think?


	3. Change is Hard

Chapter Two

As the party endured late into the night, Hermione and her friends utilized the open bar to their hearts' content. Some more than others, she noted, as she watched Millicent and her boyfriend take center stage on the dance floor, eager to show off what little body coordination and a generous ingestion of liquor eventually amounted to.

Weddings are always a strange place to be, and Hermione realized this quickly. Bill and Fleur's wedding had been pregnant with nervous energy and trepidation, masked with the happiness they wanted to feel, but couldn't completely – and that had been different. Happiness, let alone weddings, had always been met with open yet cautious arms during the war. You took it when you had the chance, but always understood that it could be just as easily taken away. There was no such thing as owning happiness back then, only borrowing.

But now here they were, post-war, guests to a wedding that marked real change. There was that profound symbolism to it, but it was also still just a wedding. Hermione had seen some of Pansy's friends fighting with their boyfriends, or having wild sex in the bathroom, or some waiting to be asked to dance with a smile fake enough to be plastic. With weddings there was always such a mixed cauldron of emotions, different to each person and where they happened to be in their life. For her, she found herself still pondering this as she stood there with her cold beer, watching Ginny and Malfoy from across the way.

Bitterly, she wondered what they could possibly have in common, besides their alma mater – and being beautiful, of course. Never in a million years would she have thought Ginny would ever look like she belonged with Malfoy, but the moment she saw it, it all just clicked in the most unfair way. She had her gorgeous strawberry hair and her alabaster, porcelain skin; that kind of elegant beauty that was hard to miss. Not to mention she walked gracefully in four-inch heels like she'd been born with them on. She'd never hated her for that before. Why should she start now?

Harry appeared next to her, putting down his drink. He knew exactly what she was looking at. "Are you just going to stand here and plan an intervention or are you going to dance with me?"

She felt her face flush, but set her beer down next to his. He smiled and grabbed her hand, leading them to a spot on the dance floor.

Dean, who had been busy dancing with Pansy, saw them and gave them an approving wink.

"What, can't a guy dance with the most beautiful girl at a wedding?" he said to her, giving her a spin. "Platonically speaking, of course."

She whirled right back into his arms, Ginny and Malfoy slowly blurring out of her mind. "Only if you mean it."

"You'd hurt me if I didn't. Do I really have a choice not saying things I don't mean?"

Hermione couldn't help it. She smiled, and Harry knew he had her. From over her shoulder, she knew he was looking at the same thing.

"Are you over her, Harry?" she asked him quietly, carefully watching his face.

"I never know what people mean when they ask that," he said.

"What do you mean?"

"I mean, are people asking me if I still think about her? Of course I do. Or if I still love her? Of course I do. But do I still want to be with her? Not especially."

When Harry said things like this, Hermione couldn't help but love him. She loved Ron, too, but her love for Harry was like the way you loved an old childhood memory – a kind of love that warms you instantly, that made you feel better no matter what.

"Does it bother you, then? Seeing her with Malfoy?"

"Seeing anyone with Malfoy will always bother me," he said, spinning her again. When she came back, like a satellite coming down to earth, he was smiling. "He's vile."

After Harry, Ron unattached himself from a pretty former Ravenclaw to ask for a dance with her. After that, Hermione went to get another drink. Malfoy and Ginny were still talking. She wondered if they were ever going to dance. She could tell from the way Ginny was gently shaking her right foot and glancing out at all the dancing people that she was hoping he would ask her.

Hermione picked up her drink and stood up, walking away from the crowd. She could see that the garden had been decorated with more twinkling fairy lights. A few people were there, coming and going. There was a couple in the corner that had taken to passionately making out. She couldn't help but think that perhaps weddings were just a more grown-up version of the dances they used to have at school, with the whole holy matrimony part just thrown in.

The music became fainter as she went further into the gardens. They had a few antique cages of tropical birds, beautiful and asleep.

She spent some time there, settling on a nice bench and finishing her beer. The breeze was soothing here. She had begun to feel claustrophobic and lightheaded with all of the moving bodies around her. She nudged off her heels and enjoyed her temporary solitude.

It was a few minutes later that she saw him turn the corner, and she felt her muscles stiffen. She purposely plugged up her mouth with her beer and took one big gulp as he approached her. She silently wondered what had happened to Ginny. She optimistically hoped that Ginny had only just regained her sense and sent him packing.

"Don't you find it tiring?" she said to him, as he stood above her. "Walking around, looking so smug all the time? Or is your face just permanently stuck that way?"

"Strange," he drawled. "Your friend Weasley doesn't seem to find it so appalling. Don't tell me you haven't noticed."

She sent him a withering glare, but didn't say a word about it.

"At the wedding. Why weren't you clapping?"

"Malfoys," he said seriously, "don't clap."

"So you're not unhappy for Pansy then. You just want to look unhappy, so you don't ruin your reputation of being unhappy by looking happy. Even just a little." She sarcastically smiled. "How do you possibly get up in the morning, Malfoy? Your life is obviously fraught with impossible expectations."

"As a matter of fact, I get up in the morning just fine. Just like how I assume you do, knowing two-thirds of the world has better hair than you do."

She shook her head, laughing. "I think you're getting a little soft, Malfoy. Out of all the traits that you could have slapped me in the face with, you chose something as fluffy as hair."

For a brief second she saw strawberry hair. Shiny strawberry hair, beautifully carried away by the wind. She actually liked her hair, thank you very much. It had been unruly and beastly in her adolescent years, that much was true, but as she got older it had softened. While it wasn't spectacular, it wasn't so terrible, either. It just was. Coffee with cream brown, intolerant of humidity, wavy and thick, absorbent to things like cigarette smoke and snow. It was hair. Just hair.

"We have the whole night to go through your character flaws," he drawled. "I'm only getting started."

She smiled to herself. "Not if I hex you first."

"Oh, I'm shaking in my boots," he said, his voice dripping with sarcasm. "You're far too self-righteous for that. You'd be shamed from the wizarding world."

"Or," Hermione said, flicking his arrogant, upturned little nose, "exalted."

She hated that nose. She hated the way it was so perfectly proportional to his face, the way it looked good from any angle, and the way he looked down on her so easily from it. She also hated the way he used to dig it into the crook of her neck when they had sex, or the way she used to sometimes catch him smelling her hair. Her hair, that he so adamantly believed to be so terrible. She wished she could say all of these things to him, but she knew she shouldn't. It was petty, and it was old news. And she was over it.

He looked at her, annoyed. She relished that look. She wished she could bottle it up and wear it around her neck, as a reminder to herself of how some things never changed. "You're drunk," he observed. He said this with a confusing mix of both satisfaction and annoyance.

"Not drunk," she corrected him, with as much Head Girl tonality as she could muster. "Just buzzed."

He sat down next to her, then, and she had to suppress the urge to scoot away, as if they were in grade school and he had cooties. She tried to figure out what the mature, adult way of saying "Go away, I hate you" was, but her brain seemed to be working at half-power. Instead she was just quiet, wondering what it was that Malfoy wanted from her.

The simple – and familiar – feel of his body next to hers threatened to pull her under, but she resisted. Oh, how she resisted.

"Still the same, aren't we, Granger?"

She knew what he was asking, or at least – she thought she knew what he was asking. It was a question she could have taken a million different ways but she knew well enough to only take it one way. It was the obvious direction. All signs pointed there.

"Of course," she said, her throat a little dry. She jutted out her chin, semi-defiantly. "Why wouldn't we be?"

And then the moment ended. Even if she never knew when the moment started, she always knew when it ended. The end was always the part that was hardest to miss – like the bubble popped and the real world, loud and clamorous, swooped in again and claimed her.

He stood up, giving her a snotty look. "Isn't that job at the Ministry paying you enough for a pedicure? Your toenails are beastly."

"While I'm quite sure my new salary can afford me a pedicure," she said, glaring at him, "all the money in the world could never make you any less of an asshole." She cleared her throat. "Clearly."

He smirked at her, adjusting his dress robes. "While I may be an asshole, at least I still have my charm."

"I hope you choke on your own bile, Malfoy," she said, but he had already begun to walk away. She thought that as she grew older into a respectable, more mature adult she wouldn't have to fight the urge to hurl a hex at the back of his head so much. Now she realized with startling clarity that it had been a tall order to ask from her future self.

"Have fun drinking by yourself, Granger," he called out to her behind his shoulder. "It'll be good practice for the rest of your sad, spinster life."

Hermione cursed at his back, but only leaned back against the bench as he disappeared around the corner. When she turned her head, she could see that one of the birds had woken up and was leering at her.

"Stop looking at me like that, Bird," she said. "Like you're better than me. You're not. Try going to school with him for seven years and see how you like it."

The bird squawked at her, before cocking its head the other way. It hid its face back into its wing, and Hermione stood herself up to make her way back to the party. Hopefully it was on the same path back to her sanity.

When she got there, she could clearly see Malfoy and Ginny out on the dance floor. Ginny was smiling and laughing as if he was the least repulsive man on earth – as if he was actually a genuinely decent human being.

She felt something warm brush up beside her.

"Let me guess. You want to shove him into a woodchipper. Slowly."

Smiling, she turned to Harry beside her and took a seat. "That would be incredibly correct – if I gave a rat's ass about Malfoy." When Harry gave her an unconvinced look, she explained, "I just worry about her judgment, that's all."

"You're not the only one. Ron's not too happy about it, either."

"Well, is he going to say anything to her?"

"Probably. I mean, Ron can say all he likes, but he knows she's a grown girl. When it comes down to it, Ginny does what she wants, and he knows that." He paused. "There isn't anything he can say that she hasn't already considered."

She said nothing. She watched them for a second more before tearing her eyes away, instead watching Dean and Pansy. They were still on the dance floor, having the time of their life. They were in love, and they were having fun. In a way, it was almost as painfully intimate to witness – even though there they were, surrounded by dozens of people – as what she had heard in the bathroom with Pansy and her mum. Sometimes happiness could be just as personal as pain, maybe even more so.

"Some people make it seem like moving on is so easy," she said quietly, as Dean twirled Pansy. She landed right back in his arms, like two magnets, her bright red lips agape in laughter. He gave her a kiss on the forehead before they separated again, dancing. "Like it requires no work."

"Hard or easy," Harry said, "it doesn't matter. It's simple. You move on or you get left behind." He picked up another slice of cake from a server passing by. "Sometimes you even get married. Funny, isn't it?"

She leaned her head on his shoulder, suddenly exhausted. She closed her eyes to block out the flash of blond she could see in the corner of her eye. "Hilarious."

ooo

When the party ended, they walked toward the carriages that were supposed to take them back. Hermione had sobered up a little by then, walking alongside Harry and Ron, trying not to glance behind her at Ginny and Malfoy, who had lingered behind. An hour ago they had bid the happy newlyweds off on their new blissful life together and their honeymoon in Morocco.

"I would never do this to Dean, but I would've loved it if someone'd gotten really drunk and picked a fight with Malfoy. Just to get one hit in. Just one," Ron was saying, before Ginny had finally caught up with them.

Ron stared at her. "Really, Gin?" he grunted.

"Oh, don't patronize me, Ron," Ginny said. "I'm a grown woman. I can make my own decisions about who I date, thank you."

"Date? Who said anything about date?"

Ginny rolled her eyes. "If you hate it, stay out of my business."

"Gladly," he said. "Just the thought alone makes me want to puke."

"Grow up, will you?"

Ron was silent for a second, his orange brow wrinkled in thought, and Hermione almost believed he had dropped it. If she had been eleven, she would have gladly jumped into the conversation, talking about how Ron should mind his own business, and sticking with Ginny in matters of womanhood solidarity. But she was more mature now, with more tact, and she knew to stay out of it. She glanced at Harry, who was simply looking ahead, also determined not to get involved. But inside, she wondered if it was just as much of a touchy subject for him, too, and he just cared too much to show it.

"I just thought you were better than that, that's all," he said.

"Better than what?" Ginny's voice was sharp.

"I mean, Harry I could understand. He's actually a swell guy, on top of the whole champion of the wizarding world stuff. But Malfoy?"

"We're not at Hogwarts anymore, Ron. Nobody even goes by those stupid rules anymore."

"It's not about Hogwarts," Ron said heatedly. "His prattishness goes beyond Hogwarts, Gin. Did you forget he's made our life a living hell?"

They argued until the carriages arrived. Harry took one with Ron and Hermione took the next with Ginny, who was only too glad to be separated from her judgmental brother.

Ginny climbed into the carriage with a heaving sigh. "Can you believe him? How can anybody be so narrow-minded?" she fumed.

Hermione bit back the urge to defend Ron, to say that he wasn't being narrow-minded, he was telling the truth. Instead she closed her eyes and stayed quiet, praying for the carriage ride to be short, wanting the night to be over already. The image of Malfoy and Ginny, talking closely throughout the night, flashed in her mind and she tried desperately to rub it away.

"Hermione," Ginny said, her voice low. "You don't agree with him, do you? With Ron, about Draco?"

_Yes_, she thought. _Yes,__ I __agree __with __Ron.__ And__ I__ almost __never__ agree __with __Ron_.

But instead she said, "No. No, I don't. You should do what you want, Ginny. A lot's changed since then."

She said this because she knew it was what Ginny wanted to hear – and she couldn't blame her, either. It was what she would have said and believed if she was really as mature and grown-up as she wished she was, flippant and indifferent to past matters like Malfoy. If she was, she would have said farewell to that tightly wound feeling she felt in her gut every time he walked into a room or someone mentioned his name. This was something she hadn't felt in so long – that is, until today.

Or she would have forgiven him. For everything. Except the problem was that maybe she didn't want to. And he had never really asked.

Ginny seemed satisfied with this, being so shallowly smitten with the idea of her and Malfoy, because she ate it up without further question. "You're right. Thanks, Hermione. You're totally right." She was smiling, shaking her head. "Ron can be such an idiot," she said, gently and with sisterly affection, leaning her head back against the cushion.

Hermione went home that night, tossing off her shoes and crawling into bed. She curled up into herself, and in her last moments of consciousness before falling asleep, she thought: _You,__ Hermione __Granger,__ are __a__ big__ fake_.


	4. A Good Deed Punished

**A/N**: It took me two years, but here's chapter three! Forgive me?

* * *

><p>Chapter Three<p>

"Have you seen this rubbish?"

Today's issue of _Witch Weekly_ – opened up to a small yet attention-grabbing blurb on page 17 – was slapped down on the counter in front of them. Over their beers, Harry and Hermione found themselves staring at a candid picture of Ginny and Malfoy exiting some posh restaurant in Wizarding London, accompanied by the caption: _Letting Bygones Be Bygones:_ _Could this be the next wedding of the decade?_

"I can't even – I don't even want to touch it," Ron said, grabbing a rag off the counter and furiously scrubbing his hands with it.

"She looks quite happy," Harry calmly observed.

Ron threw down the rag. "Don't make me punch you, mate," he said, very seriously, "because – make no mistake – I will."

"She's a grown woman, Ron," Hermione half-heartedly reasoned, taking another sip from her beer. She wondered if it was still too early to order the next round. "She's shown she can clearly make her own decisions."

"_Bad_ decisions!" Ron yelled. "She's shown she can clearly make _bad_ decisions!"

"You're going to give yourself an aneurysm," she said.

"I'm hoping I do," Ron said, his face flushed and his blue eyes shining with anger. He sighed and slumped down on a stool beside her. "Just so I wouldn't have to stand by and witness this unholy union," he grumbled.

Harry passed him a cold beer from behind the bar. "Relax. It's not like they're getting married."

"I wouldn't put it beyond them, after Dean and Pansy. It's a twisted universe we're living in now." He turned to Hermione. "Can't you talk some sense to her, Hermione? Like, I don't know, do some strange woman-to-woman thing where she siphons out some of your common sense?"

"That's not really how it works, Ron." She closed the magazine, hoping the saying _Out of Sight, Out of Mind_ was at least somewhat true. "And I'm sure it isn't serious. You know Ginny. She has quite a rap sheet of famous dates – no offense, Harry."

"Please, speak freely at my expense," Harry said.

"And Malfoy can't commit even if his precious little blond coif depended on it," she continued. "Between those two serial-daters, I'd be surprised if they even lasted a few months."

"That's already a few months too many," Ron muttered. He took a thirsty gulp of his beer, while Hermione also tried to rub the photo of Malfoy and Ginny away from her mind. A part of her had wished whatever paparazzi had snapped this photo of them had the mercy of catching them at a less flattering angle. _The Beauty and the Rat Bastard_, she thought to herself. _Now _there's_ a more appropriate caption._

Ron continued to bemoan his little sister's sanity and allude to ways he could possibly kill Draco Malfoy in a manner that would fit the way his existence still poisoned their lives. Hermione left at a quarter to nine, made a pot of tea, changed into her pajamas, and got into bed.

She stared up at her dark ceiling, feeling the minutes tick by, her head still crammed with thoughts. Slowly – and with a newfound vengeance – memories were beginning to arise, as if Malfoy's sudden reappearance had triggered some kind of mental erosion.

_We were at war,_ she told herself. _Nobody knew up from down. We took what we could get. We did what we could to survive._

ooo

_Three and a half years ago_

"Stop."

She froze, looking up at him questioningly. When she grabbed her cup to sip from it, she realized her tea had gone cold. She didn't know how long she had been sitting there, thinking.

"I can hear you," he drawled. "The gears in your mind grinding, going into overtime. Overanalyzing."

She scoffed. She wanted to glare at him, but even the sight of him unnerved her, and what they had done was still too fresh, so she busied herself with drinking her cold tea. She'd always hated cold tea – she'd rather drink from rain gutters – but it was better than having to see the reason why her conviction was now pricking her like hot knives. God, how she hated him. But now she hated herself more.

"What we did – it's never going to happen again," she said, tersely. This time, she privileged him with a thorough glare.

He snorted. "Bloody hell, Granger, you can at least say it. We're in a goddamned war, your friends are being blown to bits left and right, you've possibly already signed your own death warrant, and you can't even say the word '_fuck'_?"

She flinched. Just hearing the word made her want to bathe herself in bleach. She had a flash of his rough, scabbed hands down her jeans, his mouth on her neck. It opened something primal in her, and it made her feel sick. They were burying bodies every day, and talked about death like it was a fond mutual neighbor they'd all shared in the past. The last thing she needed was Draco Malfoy ripping off her panties in a broom closet, or cave, or wherever else their hunt for Voldemort took them – and her, letting him.

"Stop."

"You fucking prude."

In one quick draw, the teacup was on the floor, lying in shards within a growing puddle of tea. Her wand was pointed straight at his throat.

"The next time you come near me, I will personally make sure that you can never enjoy another orgasm again. Got it?"

He watched her with a look of half-annoyance and something else she couldn't read. On his face, she could still see the scar where Bellatrix's spell had hit him, two weeks ago. It was fading now, but still there. She wished it would fade quicker; she hated the reminders that he was as much in this war as she and her friends were. He was on their side. He never should have been allowed, but here he was. Here was where he had been. The most impossible of places. And yet.

And now he knew what she sounded like in her dirtiest dreams. He knew what the combination of dirt, blood, and her sweat tasted like. He had touched parts of her that had never seen the light of day. He had made her _quiver_.

"I hate to break it to you, Granger, but you killed three people today. Death Eaters, sure, but people nonetheless," he said. "You're delusional if having a mindless fuck with me is what's going to keep you up at night, feeling all twisted up. And, if it is – then I envy you, I really do. But wait a few more weeks, and then you'll see. That's when the real nightmares will come."

He began to walk out of the room, before he stopped. "By the way, the next time you use up all the hot water, I'll crucify you. That's a promise."

ooo

She knew when something was happening at the office. People were no longer yelling at each other and were instead passing along a revolving wave of whispers and wide-eyed looks. She had just shrugged off her coat and put down her cup of coffee when she realized what was happening.

"Oh, for fuck's sake."

A tall, chiseled head of blond hair was walking through the aisles of their cramped office. His designer suit and privileged swagger gave him the distinction of someone who clearly had no business being here. She felt as if someone had just _Accio_'d a fat stone into her stomach.

She watched him disappear into Wendelin Worthsbrook's humble office, along with a statuesque, snotty-looking woman trailing after him with a thin leather briefcase.

She must have watched that closed door from her desk for close to an hour, with a furrowed brow and a carousel of possible reasons why Draco Malfoy would be taking a meeting _here_. Perhaps one of his businesses had been accused of inhumane practice – she wouldn't put it past him. But if so, appeals were with Legal, on the second floor. Additionally, she would have heard of it by now. As much as she hated to admit it, the Malfoy name was still feared and respected, even after the war. _Witch Weekly_ hadn't been lying when they had written that article about him; Draco had been busy these past three years, rebuilding his family's empire. Many suspected he was even wealthier now than ever before. Of course, his reputation as having been a "turncoat for good" hailed him as somewhat of a hero. She thought the label was laying it on a little thick, and yes, she was more than a little bit bitter about his exaggerated role in the war.

_Just because you survive a war doesn't make you any less of a prick_, she thought.

Finally, the door opened. Motion in their office stilled as he walked by, wearing his usual self-superior scowl, with his gazelle-looking secretary behind him. The second he disappeared into the elevator, Hermione had launched herself toward Wendelin's office.

"Worthsbrook, why was Malfoy on the third floor?" Hermione asked. She noticed that a large stack of papers were being magically filed behind her boss's head.

She looked tired. She imagined they all did. Their company was new, well-meaning, excruciatingly low on funding, and no longer as drunk on the idea of social and creature equality as it'd been on their launching day. It was general knowledge that after three years, they were on their last leg. If they didn't manage to make their numbers this year, the Ministry would be pulling their funding and closing them down for good.

"He owled for a meeting with me last week," Wendelin informed her, as her empty mug refilled itself with steaming black coffee. "About company acquisition."

She felt the blood drain from her face. "Tell me you're joking, Wendelin."

"I would, but it's as far away from a joke as it can possibly be. It's in paper." She motioned to the parchments still being filed away. "We signed the contracts today. Our firm is now officially owned by Malfoy."

"That's impossible. We're a public company – owned by the Ministry. That's why we've got such sorry funding for the past three years, why this firm's been wheezing to survive since day one. The only way Malfoy could have even _entertained_ the thought of owning us is if—"

"The Ministry acquiesced us to him," she finished. "He put in a bid and they agreed to it. Frankly, I'm not surprised. Even with the whole equality-for-all sentiment after the war, the Ministry's always seen us as an eyesore. Face it: the only reason we even got our funding was because of your contribution to saving the world from a noseless tyrant. They were still sensitive about their image to the public, three years ago. Now they couldn't care less."

Hermione was shaking her head. She was getting angrier by the second. "There's got to be another way."

Wendelin looked at her with soft eyes. "Look, I know you don't like him, and I don't doubt he's the scoundrel you've often drunkenly vented he is… but would it really be so bad? He's got money, Hermione. He's giving us more than we need. He's making minimal changes, so we'll be doing things exactly the way we've been doing them – except a little more comfortably, and a little more efficiently. So would it really be so terrible if our struggling little firm _was_ owned by him?"

"Yes," she was saying, already halfway out the door. "Because you don't know him."

ooo

"Miss Granger, Mister Malfoy's expecting you," his frigid secretary let her know, as Hermione stormed into the top floor of his building.

"Oh, shut up," she snapped, as she walked into his office.

The door promptly shut behind her, and it quickly gave her the feeling of being trapped inside a bubble. His office was soundproofed. She sarcastically wondered why that was.

The right corner of his lip twitched with amusement. "I take it you've heard," he drawled.

"Are you bored, or something?" she fumed. "This whole 'rebuilding the Malfoy empire' thing's gotten a little too dull, so now you're back to reminding earnest, hardworking people like me that the universe will never turn completely in our favor?"

"I see you've inherited Potter's flair for the dramatics over the last few years."

"Answer my question, or I'll hex the blond right out of you."

When he looked at her, she wanted to rip those steely, shaded eyes from their sockets. "As I recall, I don't have to _answer_ your _question_. I own your company now – the only person that'll be getting any answers around here is the person whose _name_ happens to grace the company logo. So why don't you just cut through all the fat and ask me the question that _really_ brought you here, Granger."

She glared at him and imagined setting him on fire.

He continued on. "Which is if I bought your hippie little firm just to make you miserable." He paused for a moment, and she still didn't interject. "To which I answer: No. That part's just the perk."

"You're unbelievable, you know that?" she said, shaking her head. "We started this firm up by ourselves. We fought the Ministry to get it. We've bled to keep it from crashing into the ground. We do a _good thing_ here, and I'm not going to let you ruin it."

In her mind, a memory flashed. It was him at the train station, on the last day of school, and the look he'd given her. She'd tried to throw that look away, tried to shrink it so that it would fit into the cracks of her conscience. But it grew hands and it burrowed itself someplace she couldn't grab it long enough to _Obliviate_.

He was looking at her that way now. It washed over her like an old habit, and it took her a moment to shake it away. _You've already ruined so much else._

"Face the facts, Granger. Your sad little firm is now underneath the Malfoy insignia. Believe it or not, I am businessman. I buy things and I make them better. If you hate it so much, leave – that is, if you can stomach leaving your little baby to me."

The door behind her opened. "No? Then our business here is done. Leave."

She clenched her hands into fists beside her, wondering what her chances were of hexing him before he could defend himself. Finally, still feeling the heat radiating from the top of her skull, she turned on her heel to leave.

"Oh, and say hi to Ginny for me," he said.

"Fuck you," she spat. "Tell her yourself."

Once she crossed the doorway, she didn't care to look back and catch the smirk on his face.

ooo

_Three and a half years ago_

The duration of the war felt like a never-ending string of bad and worse nights.

That night had been a particularly bad one. They had been set up by a source they had trusted, and was met with a nasty ambush that led to a dozen deaths of their own. Hannah Abbott had been one of them. And Colin. And Cho. Along with so many others that she had spent exhausting, mind-numbing nights with – planning attacks, trying to cover up their tracks, reciting pep talks that had lost their vigor long ago. They had lost so many, and she was starting to wonder when it was going to end. Losing people was starting to become so normal. Expected. Now they buried bodies without flinching.

She had ventured off into the woods alone. She needed to be away from everyone, to gather her thoughts, to find some semblance in war to reaffirm that she was doing the right thing. _This is worth fighting for_, she said to herself. She thought of her parents who no longer had any memories of raising a daughter. If only other things could be so easily erased.

It was when she heard the snap of a twig behind her that she stopped. She stared at the darkness in front of her, the parts of the trees that were now scorched and gutted from wayward spells – evidence that horrible things had happened here. Would she ever be able to walk anywhere again that didn't have a horrible history? That didn't bear the weight of ghosts?

"Go away," she said. Her breath came out as a thick, white vapor. In the suddenness of the attack, she had forgotten to cast a heat charm. She had lost the feeling in her fingers.

When he didn't say anything, she said it again. "I said, _go away_." She could feel him there, watching her. Was this what war did to people? She felt him in any room, now. His presence was just that heavy. "I just want to be alone for a little while. Okay?"

After she didn't hear anything, she began to walk again. Then she heard it: footsteps, quickening in their stride behind her. Before she knew it, he had grabbed her and turned her around.

His face was luminous in the moonlight, which was ironic. Because he was just as covered in blood as the rest of them. There were identical bruises underneath his eyes that indicated just how much sleep they hadn't had in the past few weeks.

"I can't bury anymore people," she said to him, in a half-sob and half-shout. "I already feel too numb. And – it shouldn't be this way. It shouldn't feel like it's all just in a day's work." She began to weakly fight him off – she tried to – but in her struggle, her wand slipped from her grasp. "So go away. Leave me the hell alone!"

She hated him seeing her like this. How weak he must think she was, to let war get to her like this. This was happening to everyone, not just her, and she was the one who cracked first. Nobody would have even known if he hadn't followed her.

He was kissing her. She could taste the blood and smoke in his mouth, and she knew without having to ask that she tasted exactly the same way. They were at war. There was a chance they were never going to taste like pumpkin juice or butterbeer ever again, but she liked to pretend.

As he backed her up into a tree and began tearing away at her clothes, she imagined them someplace fond in her memories – the library, in corner of the stacks. She tried to see it in its last glorious state, not the obliterated ruins they all knew it to be now. It would have been normal. Two teenagers, not fighting in a war but in the midst of raging hormones, having sex, giving into their biological drives – a story told a million times over. This was what she thought of when she felt him enter her; still what she thought of when she bit against his shoulder to keep herself from moaning his name.

It was exactly what she needed and precisely what she didn't. She was beginning to be able to live inside that gray space of contradictions. She had no idea why Malfoy had chosen her, but she had chosen him back. She was scared to wonder beyond that. This was primal. It gave her a yearning glimpse outside of death and destruction. In the most perverse way, this was _good_.

She allowed herself to feel good while they fucked. If it really was so terrible, she reasoned, they would kill her at the end. It was as simple as that.

ooo

There was French music playing, which would have been a nice touch, had Hermione not spent the entire night agonizing over the new owner of her cherished firm and trying to figure out how to get out of Malfoy's contract. She'd had Wendelin let her take a peek at it. It was basically icon-clad. She had even tried to discreetly burn it, but he had thought of that too, and had set up charms to repel anything that could destroy it.

"He bought the firm," she said, lifelessly, as the waitress served her some tea, and Harry his breakfast plate. His eggs were piled high with his bacon extra crispy, just the way he liked it.

He shoveled food into his mouth, squinting at her. "Who did?"

"The devil. Lucifer himself ascended from the fires of hell to make me reconsider my purpose in life."

"How is it," Harry wondered aloud, "that we spent a few glorious years without a single sighting of that creature and now I can't even go an hour without someone mentioning his name?"

"He's a virus," Hermione said. "He's latched onto Ginny and now he's going to wipe us all out."

"Oh, I don't think it's Ginny he's latched onto. It's not her firm he's buying."

"She doesn't have a firm for him to buy. She gets five-star restaurants and her picture in Witch Weekly with Ron sharpening his knives to the image of Malfoy's face," she muttered, and Harry raised his eyebrows at her. "My point is, I'm confused as to why the rest of us have to suffer because of Ginny's new relationship."

"Don't say 'relationship' around Ron. They're already one argument away from being estranged."

She stared at him, shaking her head. "How do you not hate him?"

"Because it's exhausting, Hermione. Don't you ever feel that? I mean, don't get me wrong – sometimes, I do really hate him. I hate him for buying your firm. And there will always be the annoying little headache in the back of my skull whenever he pops up. But I'm retired from all that. I'm not going to pick fights," he shrugged. "And so far, it's worked quite well for me."

The way Harry looked at her made her feel guilty. It reminded her of why it was her hatred towards Malfoy seemed amplified. He reminded her of a time she wasn't proud of, a time she'd spent years trying to erase. She had to climb above that. Prove she was over it.

"And I know you hate the excuse, Hermione, but he did fight on our side."

She quietly scoffed. "That doesn't change anything, Harry. Our side was the one that won. He jumped on the life raft when it suited him."

"We were in the red for a while, too, remember?" he said. "There was a point in the war where it could have easily gone the other way."

She remembered that week. It was burned into her memory bank forever. That was the week she could feel them all splitting apart, like tree branches that had become too dry to stick together. Too dead. Too strained.

She shook it away. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to bring it up." She started to dig into her breakfast with her fork, trying to forget about Malfoy and the unsettled feelings he still gave her. She would find a way to suffocate that feeling. She would.

"Sorry, sorry, I'm here," Ron was saying, as he sat down at their table, nearly spilling over their drinks. "Turns out, Ginny and I are estranged for the moment being," he said, as he grabbed a piece of bacon from Hermione's breakfast. "Which is just as well. I told her I wouldn't be speaking to her until she came to her senses and dumped Malfoy. And possibly committed to St. Mungo's. But only to run a few tests – you know, to make sure she's really _there_. Because I'm starting to doubt it, you know. I really am."

She would never admit it, but it made her feel a little bit better that Ron was taking Ginny and Malfoy pretty hard – granted, their reasons differed somewhat, but reasons were reasons. She could sympathize with Ron. After all, when he saw Malfoy, he saw everything that was (still) wrong with the world. And when she saw Malfoy, she saw that and more. She saw history that was in danger of surfacing.

She saw a problem.

* * *

><p>Please review!<p> 


	5. Soirees and Secrets

**A/N**: Thanks for the reads and reviews! Also, a big thanks to waterflower20 for pointing out some inconsistencies with the previous chapters – that's fixed now. Happy reading!

* * *

><p>Chapter Four<p>

On Monday morning, Hermione stared up at their office building and the obscene logo that now graced its smooth, flat face. She barely even recognized their building. Once an abandoned Ministry building, it'd had the appearance of a generally nondescript building with a slightly crumbling infrastructure. Now it shared the look of nearly all Malfoy-owned companies – sleek, gray, with dark reflective windows. It was a cold, intimidating building, with an _M_ underneath their redesigned name.

"Oh, that is so unholy," she muttered to herself, before taking a breath and walking in.

The changes happened quickly. Cubicles were enlarged for comfort, ventilation was added, and gone was Matilda, their clumsy but earnest, overworked secretary. She had been replaced with something also new and frigid: a slender Brunette named Ingrid whose demeanor discouraged any kind of sociability.

On everyone's desk was a thick packet of new information. New clauses, contracts, and rules. She looked over them with a fine tooth comb, searching for anything that she could use to take the company back. She didn't know what she expected to find – a blueprint of a hidden dungeon on the first floor for all who didn't agree with his leadership, perhaps – but she disappointedly found nothing.

It was on Tuesday when she walked in to find that an extra office had been added to their floor. She glared at the gold name placard on the door, as well as the secretary sitting in front of it.

"Is this really necessary?" Hermione demanded, as she walked into his new office. It looked identical to the one at his headquarters: pristine and pompous. "We can do our work here just fine without you peeking over our shoulders. We've been doing it for the last three years."

"Which explains why this firm has been exploding at its seams with success," he said dryly. He looked at her from behind his dark mahogany desk, his gray eyes calculating. "Let me tell you about how business acquisition works, since you're clearly new at this. When I take over failing businesses, I personally see to them until I'm certain they're firm on their feet. That way there's no room for error. Understand? Good. Now go be productive."

She planted her palms at the edge of his desk, speaking low. "You may fool everyone in this office, Malfoy, with your god-awful Witch Weekly covers and impeccably tailored suits – but I _know_ you. Give me one reason to, and I will destroy you."

"While it does give me some amusement, hearing you recycle the same three threats," he said in a bored drawl, "don't you have work to do?"

Harry was right. It took so much energy to hate him. Even when she was back in her office, he was still there, in the webs of her mind, taunting her. She closed her eyes, massaging her temples. _This was my baby. Mine and Wendelin's. We failed._

Wendelin popped her head in. Her eyes sparkled with excitement. "Hermione dear, staff meeting in five. Bring the handbook."

ooo

"Hermione! Hi!"

Hermione looked up from her pile of cases to see Ginny Weasley standing in her doorway, wearing an emerald green dress that perfectly complimented her strawberry hair. She glanced at her clock and put down the papers, surprised.

"Ginny, how are you? Are you—"

"Just meeting Draco for a lunch date," Ginny smiled.

"Oh." Hermione looked past Ginny and her open office door to Malfoy's office, where the door was still closed. His secretary, wearing the same bored look on her face since two weeks ago, was answering some owls. "Right."

"Thought I'd come a little early and see how you've been," Ginny said. "You know, since Ron and I aren't exactly on speaking terms."

"I heard about that." She sighed. "Look, this is silly. You're brother and sister. Isn't there some way to, I don't know, have a conversation without bringing up Malfoy?"

"Have you _tried_ having a conversation with my brother?" she said dryly.

"You have a point."

"Draco tells me it's going well here – that the firm's doing better already."

She tried to keep her bitterness from showing. There was a faint itching in her ears every time she called him _Draco_. "I guess so."

"Well – and don't crucify me for this – I'm glad it's your firm that he bought out. The Ministry can barely handle things as it is, recuperating after the war. It's been a mess over there, with the reconstruction still going on and so many files lost."

Hermione nodded, still watching the door behind her. She was grateful for Ginny's thoughtful visit but she also really, really wanted her to leave.

"Oh! It's one o'clock. I'd better go. See you later, Hermione," Ginny said, and Hermione said goodbye, charming the door to close behind her. She didn't want to have to watch them parade whatever it was they had around the office; she'd be sure to hear all about it at the proverbial water cooler later.

They were still in their probation weeks – getting comfortable with the new procedures, working through trial and error. She hated to admit it, but their efficiency numbers were up, and the Malfoy funds had been spent on new hires to organize their old and new cases, which already made the work a little more seamless.

Still, she had work to do. Tons.

It was a good thing she'd just lost her appetite so she could work through her lunch.

ooo

_Three years ago_

She truly believed that it was some kind of cruel play that she'd been paired with Malfoy as Heads for their final year. Punishment, maybe. She had indulged with him during the war, entertained thoughts of him when the mood had been too dark, and now she was stuck with him. She was going to spend the entire year associating her shame with his smirking face.

"Just so you know," she said, when they had finally entered their common room, their Heads badges pinned to their chests, "what happened between us during the war – that's over."

"Right," he loudly snorted. "Where have I heard that little conversational gem before?"

She wanted to slap him. "I mean it, Malfoy. This is strictly business. We're keeping our distance from each other. Besides, we're not at war anymore." Her voice softened. "It doesn't have a reason to happen, anymore."

He looked at her, his face unreadable. She hated how she couldn't read him. Why couldn't he be an open book, like her? Why did some people have all the power of frozen facial muscles?

"Got it?" she said, firmly.

He turned his turned his back to her and headed to his room. "You worry about keeping your own promise, Granger."

"I don't have to worry," she called out after him. "I'll keep it just fine!"

She reasoned that with their reenrollment in school, she would have enough distractions to keep him out from her mind. But a small voice from the back of her skull reminded her that they had been at _war_, and even then, he had found a way to sneak in and dig himself a place inside the very place she was trying to vacate of him.

"That was different," she whispered to herself.

Except they were all different now. They were in a post-war world, living in a time that was trying to gather its broken parts and find a way to be whole again. It was different. It would always be.

ooo

A month passed. A month of meetings, procedural reviews, experimentation, and late nights. The nights Hermione stayed late, trying to catch up on all of their backlogged cases, she often noticed the light in Malfoy's office still on. He would send his secretary home around seven, and he would then stay in his office until around the time she left. She secretly watched his door on those nights; he never left his office. She was starting to wonder if he had built a secret tunnel underneath it without anyone's knowledge – which she wouldn't put beyond him at all.

She glanced at the clock. It was around ten-thirty on a Friday night. She had canceled plans to meet up with Harry at the bar because she had hit a snag with a case, which involved more paperwork and owls to send out.

She made it a point to go through her messages and mail before she left for the weekend, because she knew all too well that by Monday there would be another gargantuan stack waiting for her. She tossed some out, filed others for later, and pocketed the ones that seemed urgent. Finally, she came across a company memo, with a conspicuous _M_ emblazoned in gold foil at the top.

She read it carefully, before scoffing in disgust. Malfoy was holding a little _soiree_ to celebrate his "successful" acquisition of their firm, no doubt to stroke his ego in regards to his string of company conquests. Everyone in the company was invited. Formal dress robes were required. The press, she knew, would be swarming all over this.

She held the memo in her hand, looking up at the light shining through the glass walls of his office. She scribbled _NOT A CHANCE_ on the memo before heading over to his office to personally deliver it to him.

Usually she exercised the common decency of knocking for other people, but Draco Malfoy was not _other people. _She barged in, to hell with what he was doing.

The worst part about it was that he hadn't seemed all that surprised about her coming in unannounced.

"I've come here to RSVP," she said, putting the memo on his desk.

He looked up from the papers he had been reading, quickly glancing at what she'd written.

"Real mature," he said. "I wonder if all your dedicated, hardworking employees know you're this petty."

"Look, I'm not going to deny that – yes, you buying this company may have been the first decent thing that's happened to it since the Ministry decided to put us on the backburner, but despite the postmodern facelift you've given the sad building we were all actually quite fond of, and despite your secretarial transplant that seems to be more android than human, we are _not_ this kind of company," she said, pointing to the memo. "And by that, I mean flashy. We don't use words like _soiree_. Our Christmas parties involve donuts, spiked pumpkin juice, and a secondhand karaoke machine. And we are perfectly fine with that."

He crossed his arms around his chest, leaning back in his chair. "That's cute, Granger, but irrelevant. I own this company. Like it or not, _soirees_ like this get good press. Which help your firm. Which keep it from sinking into the black hole of economic depression."

She clenched her jaw. "Well, I'm not going," she said, before turning on her heel to walk out of his office. But when she reached for the doorknob to wrench it open and storm out, it was locked.

She had just wrapped her fingers around her wand when she heard it.

"_Expelliarmus_." Her wand flew and clattered against the window.

"You know, this bitter hag act is getting quite old," he said to her, with a hint of annoyance in his voice. "So let me put it this way, Granger, since your little oxygen-deprived brain obviously needs things spelled out for you: you're going, or you're fired."

When she turned around, he was out of his chair. He was just a few long strides away from her now. She could feel herself starting to feel unsettled at her situation. The last thing she needed was to be alone with Malfoy. That circumstance had a history of turning out a certain way that always involved losing a little bit of dignity.

"The image of company solidarity is important for the public to see," he said, coincidentally answering the question that had been pulsing in her mind: _what's it to you whether I go or not, you sadistic prick? _"So stop being a _child_ and suck it up and be a team player."

She could feel the tightness in her chest. Every single muscle inside her body was aware of him, waiting for him, watching him. She hated that his mere presence commanded that kind of attention.

"Why this firm?" she said, lowly.

His face remained unchanged.

"The Ministry's a wreck. There must be dozens of other '_sad'_ little firms struggling to keep their chins up above the water – many, I assume, equally as charitable and therefore helpful in boosting your company's image. So why'd you choose mine?"

"Because yours was the saddest of them all."

She scoffed. "I don't believe you."

"Then tell me what you'd believe," he said, crossing his arms, his eyes shining with challenge. "Come on, Granger. What would you like me to tell you? What _delusion_ would you like me to fulfill?"

She didn't know. No, that was a lie. She knew but once she did, it was exactly the kind of thing she wanted to _un_know. All she could see was him on the final day of the war, looking for her without saying her name, amidst the piles of bodies and the rising smoke and destruction. And then him on the train platform, the memory sagging with the weight of the unsaid. And then him with Ginny – an image sloppily cut and pasted from the mental collage she had begrudgingly gathered from the _Witch Weekly_ Sightings page.

"Good night, Malfoy," was what she said, instead, and by then the door had been unlocked, so she grabbed her wand and left his office, with her memo still on his desk, null and void.

She felt something inside her burn as she walked away, because that was what he did – Draco Malfoy had an aftereffect. Residue like moisture rings or ash clouds or dirt in your fingernails. No matter what she did, she could never get him completely out.

When she reached the elevator, she could still see him as his door slowly shut. Still watching her, his face like a perfectly synced orchestra, his eyes the color of a still, gray sea.

She only started breathing again when the door closed.

ooo

The event was held in the Malfoy gardens. Hermione had caught on from the few old money magical weddings she had been to that "gardens" did not exactly mean they had more than one – it was just that their garden sometimes literally amassed _acres_, which then merited the plural form of what it actually was.

Malfoy's estate did not disappoint in its elegance and size. Along with a labyrinth, the Malfoys also boasted impressive marble Greek statues in their gardens, in addition to four fountains she could only guess the karats to, and a mini menagerie. Miles of fairy lights had been strung up, and there were men in black and white that directed guests to the main area. Somewhere, she could hear the stylish plucks of a harp and the low wails of a cello.

Aside from her employees and Ministry workers, there were many faces at the party she did not know but recognized from Pansy's wedding. This didn't surprise her. This was a socialite event – exactly the kind of thing she hated. Daily Prophet photographers peppered the scene, along with those from Witch Weekly and other publications thirsty to leak the newest high powered wizarding couple.

Hermione sipped her second gin and tonic as she watched the power couple of the night: the radiant Ginny Weasley and the very calculated Draco Malfoy. She studied their movements, the way they looked at each other, and tried to dig up every trivial fact she had ever heard (and then promptly forgotten) about body language and relationships. She watched his hand occasionally touch that spot on the small of her back. Watched her wrap her arm around his. But she never saw them laugh.

"Riveting, aren't they?"

Wendelin was beside her now, drinking from a flute of champagne.

"Heard Witch Weekly's already trying to bag a full-on interview and photospread with them," she said. "They're rumored to be the next Dean Thomas and Pansy Parkinson – but even bigger, if you can believe it. Nobody's a stranger to the hostility between the Malfoys and Weasleys. It reads like Romeo and Juliet – if Romeo and Juliet were born genetically flawless."

She loved Wendelin but the tone of excitement in her voice made her despise her, just a little.

"They haven't laughed."

"What?"

"They haven't laughed. They've been together the entire night, schmoozing with the other shallow socialites, and they haven't laughed. Not once."

Wendelin coughed. "Hermione, dear, you know that your eye for detail is something I consider invaluable, but I'd advise you to keep this to yourself. It's a little bit creepy."

"Right," Hermione said. "Well, if I hear another heart-wrenching harp number, I'm going to vomit. I need a break." Wendelin gave her a sympathetic squeeze on the shoulder before Hermione left the main area to explore the rest of the gardens.

She sat down near a fountain with an overlooking Aphrodite. She was a majestic thing, pure white with smooth lines, her features delicate yet voluptuous. She picked up a lily from one of the lower pools. She was surrounded by walls of plants and plenty to distract her yet all she could think of was how she wished she never came.

That was when she heard it: voices, increasing in volume, from somewhere nearby. Hermione looked around. They must be behind the wall, where she couldn't see.

It was an argument.

"Do you want to call this off?" the female voice shouted. "Because I _dare_ you. One word from you and you can just as easily be a bachelor again, shagging whatever whore that bats her eyelashes at you."

"Of course not! _I love you_, Pans! But we haven't even been married for three months, and – you know, marriage isn't supposed to be this hard. All I can think of is your parents, and how hard they pray that we'd just crash and burn. If it wasn't going to cast them in a bad light, I'm positive they would have disowned you by now."

"Well, I can't do anything about that. They're my _parents_. You know how much energy I've wasted on trying to convince them? I've done everything."

"They're ruining our marriage. And _you're_ letting them."

That was the last she heard. She guessed from the silence and faint rustle of motion that Dean had left. Hermione got to her feet, but in her hurry, toppled her glass into the fountain.

"Shit!" she hissed.

She reached over, dipping her hand into the water to retrieve it. When she looked up, Mrs. Pansy Parkinson-Thomas had appeared from behind the maze wall. She was watching her closely with her arms crossed.

Hermione tried to ignore the red-brimmed eyes that were leering at her.

"Granger."

"I'm sorry, I didn't know someone was out here—"

"I don't care what you heard," Pansy said. There was a moment of silence that passed in between them. It made her feel uncomfortable. There was a steadiness behind her eyes that made her nervous – a knowingness. "Marriage is hard. But it's even harder when Witch Weekly decides to publish an article about your pending divorce that hadn't existed before but might now actually be a possibility."

"I'm sorry," she said, trying to mean it.

"Don't be. It's none of your business." Pansy's eyes studied her. "When I heard he was buying your sad little firm, I almost thought that he'd gone barmy. Everyone was betting that the Ministry would put you out of your misery in a few months' time, but Draco always had the best and worst timing. And I bet you aren't even the slightest bit grateful for his help."

She numbed the sting from her comment with the irritation she felt towards the assumption that Draco was doing this out of the goodness of his vacant heart. "It's not help. Help is well-intended. This is political monopoly."

"Maybe," Pansy shrugged. "But it still must kill you, seeing him with that Weasley girl."

Hermione narrowed her eyes at her. "She could do better. Everyone knows it."

Pansy laughed to herself. "That's not what I mean." She stepped a little closer to her. "Oh, Granger. Wake up and smell the tension! You forget that I know a thing or two about wanting not to _want_ someone. It's a game you'll lose. I know you don't consider me much of a mental challenge, but I've always been good at reading people. It's one of my undisclosed talents. It's too bad everyone else is too daft to see something so palpable, so _there_."

She imagined herself as a blank wall. A block of untouched marble. "I don't know what you're talking about."

"Of course you don't – here, that is. Out in the public, while he's parading around with his little ginger girlfriend. But what about when you crawl into your sad, lonely, little bed at night, Granger? Do you still tell such convincing lies then?" Pansy uncrossed her arms, smirking at her. "I admire the strength in keeping up the charade, even after three years. I do. It was something I was never good at, and look where I am now."

With that – a soft lingering hint of sadness – the recently wedded Mrs. Thomas left. She heard the clicks of her stiletto heels on the stone path grow fainter as she headed back to the main area.

Hermione tried to hate her, but she pitied her more.

"My bed is not sad. Or lonely," she muttered to herself. "And we never lie to each other."

It was on that note that she decided to end the night. She made her way out of the labyrinth, and – with a few directions from the greeters – began to make her way off the Malfoy estate.

She was unnerved by Pansy's knowledge of her innermost turmoil. How long had she known? Since the war? And who else knew? She had brazenly outed _her_, but did Malfoy know the extent of Pansy's suspicions?

"Leaving already?"

She paused in her step, before turning around. There he was, the man of the hour. Alone. All the way out here, with her. She knew without having to guess that if she were just a little bit closer she would catch the stink of alcohol radiating off of him.

"I have a severe aversion to harp music," she said, dryly. "Pair that with a crowd of old money snobs, and I'm just done for." She shifted her weight between her feet. "But I came. I get to keep my job. So now I have the pleasure of leaving. All right? See you Monday."

_Go home, Hermione_. There was something different about him right now. He was unguarded, and disheveled in a way she couldn't see but felt, anyway. It made the silence that strung out between them pregnant with something she put all of her energy into trying to ignore.

"I wrote to you," he said to her back. She stopped. "Two years ago, I sent you one owl. And what did I get? All of the times the burden was put upon me to listen to _you_ gab on about petty rules and righteous self-talk, the useless hours accumulated of _your_ voice in my head talking about absolutely nothing, and what do I get in response to this owl?" he said.

She said nothing. He continued on.

"Silence."

She would never tell him. She would never tell him about the stack of drafts she had written, none of which she ever sent. None of them were good enough. None of them conveyed her inner conflict. _I still think about you and I hate myself for it. _No, that didn't even begin to explain her myriad of emotions.

"So stop acting like I've wronged you in some way. This is not a world full of mind readers, Granger. You can't get what you want without asking for it. So ask for it."

"_Ask for it_?" she scoffed, whirling around to face him. "And what do you suggest I ask for, hm? _You_?" She laughed, and it was a vehicle for sarcasm and emptiness. "Nobody _asks_ for you, Malfoy. You _happen_ to people. You show up. You buy people's firms. You build a fucking office on their floor, where you stay late nights. You date pretty girls, much to the derision of everyone who actually _care_ about them. You throw _soirees_. And now you're here. So – no, I'm not going to ask, because you show up anyway. _Without_ an invitation. _Without_ so much as anyone asking you to."

She took a step back. Then another. Then three. Then seven.

"Go back to your _soiree_, Malfoy," she called out to him. "You're drunk."

And then, with her hands still shaking, she went home.

* * *

><p>Please review!<p> 


	6. Letting Bygones be Bygones

A/N: Another quick update ya'll! Thanks for staying tuned!

* * *

><p>Chapter Five<p>

"Well, somebody's in a mood."

Hermione turned around, blinking at him. "What?"

"Might your bizarre behavior have anything to do with the little celebratory event Malfoy threw for your firm a few nights ago?" Harry inquired, stirring sugar into his coffee. "I take it you still haven't passed the olive branch between the two of you. Let me guess on what you did pass: some choice words of contempt, maybe?"

She shook it off. It was true that night had sent her off into what seemed like an impenetrable funk, but she would never admit that to Harry. How could she, when she could barely stomach admitting it to herself?

She was still digesting the side of Malfoy she'd seen that night. She resented the way he was inching her backwards from where she'd been, before he'd shown up. He turned her upside down and shook her for all she was worth, all the while she watched as all of her hard work spiraled down the drain.

He was a tornado and all she wanted to do was plant her feet down and grow roots.

"Still, I saw the pictures from that night and if the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse were there, they certainly didn't make a cameo in the photos," Harry continued. "I did see a few of Malfoy and Ginny, though, looking every bit the part of _Witch Weekly_'s dream cover spread."

Hermione couldn't help herself: she snorted.

"Okay," he said. "I sense derision."

"It's a circus show," she explained, trying her best not to let the burning ball of tar in her chest show through. It had a way of showing up often these days. "A completely exaggerated form of PDA. It might even be strategic, a way of extending his company's reaches."

Harry was looking at her very closely. "Or," he said slowly, "he might actually like her."

Hermione couldn't help it, then – she looked up and met his eyes. The unholy expression of realization that washed over his face then made her wish she had never invited him over for breakfast.

"Jesus Christ, Hermione," he said, in half-awe. He leaned back and began laughing, shaking his head.

"Harry, it's not what you think," she said, pathetically.

"It all makes sense now!" he said, and she winced. "The brooding, the incessant hostility, the hesitant support of Ginny's ability to make her own decisions. You _like_ him. I mean, you don't _want_ to like him, but you do. Bloody hell!"

"That's not it at all," she insisted.

"Please, Hermione. Ever since the wedding, you've been all out of sorts. Extremely strung up – which I attributed to his acquiring of your firm, but I always had a feeling it went a little deeper than that." He was still laughing. "Jesus fucking Christ! What a morning!"

It was useless defending herself. Harry James Potter, in a rare moment of having witnessed the pieces fall perfectly together, knew. He didn't save the wizarding world from an oppressive tyranny just by brawn alone. He knew and she hated him a little bit for it.

"You," she said firmly, getting to her feet and pointing one finger in his face, "cannot tell Ronald. By any means. Do you understand?"

"And rob him the unique, unforgettable experience of finding out for himself? I wouldn't dare."

She glared at him, before sitting down. She allowed the feeling of defeat to blanket her, just for a few minutes. Just until she could figure out what she would do, now. Pansy and Harry knew. That was two more people than she had ever planned on knowing. What were the chances they would simply take this secret to their graves? And how soon would that approximately be?

"How long?" he asked.

She shook her head. "Don't. You don't want to know."

"Oh, that's where you're wrong," he said. "I actually, really do."

ooo

_Three and a half years ago_

After the meeting, she snuck into one of the rooms at Grimmauld Place. It was dark, musty, and covered with a substantial layer of dust. She gravitated towards the solitary window that glowed from the downpour of snow outside. She stood there, thinking, trying to come up with a better plan – one that involved less urgency for a goodbye. Her mind burrowed tunnels around the attack, searching for loopholes and weak spots, or ways to circumvent the fatalities they predicted.

She wasn't surprised when she heard the door creak open, and then shut again. She heard his light, muffled footsteps on the rug.

She kept her eyes on the snow piling up outside the window. "What they're sending you on – it's a suicide mission."

"We're in a war," he snorted. "Every mission's a suicide mission."

She turned around to look at him, her hand clenched around her wand. She was unconsciously gnawing on her bottom lip. This was one of her tells. It exasperated him.

He scoffed at her with condescension. "Don't get all sappy on me now, Granger. This is not a romance novel. That's not us."

"I wasn't," she snapped. She allowed her anger to flare hotly just for a moment before she realized what he was doing. He was good at this. He was a snake charmer and he knew exactly what to do and say to make her hate him. She used to think it was just an incurable condition – a side effect to his natural state as an asshole – but she knew now that his insufferableness was purely conscious. It was a weapon. It kept him a closed door; it gave him power that way.

"And there is no _us_," she said. "What we have – no, what we _do_, it doesn't get that. A title. It doesn't get to _have_ one of those, do you get that?"

_It's easier to bury that way. If it doesn't have a name, it doesn't exist._

"Fine," he said. That was all he said. Because then he just looked at her, his face slightly lit from the glare of the snow, his gray eyes as opaque as concrete. She tried to remember him before the war – the unaffected way he made everyone miserable, the darkness that was covered up by petty pranks and malicious words he peppered around the halls. As if that was his bloody legacy. As if that was all he was good for.

His face was so much more angular now. All harsh lines and pale blond scruff. The smoothness and ease that had been endowed to him through a privileged life was gone – or at least now hanging by a fine, fine thread. Like the rest of them, the scars he'd gained marked him like a roadmap. He was no longer polished silver and unwrinkled suits. Now he was sandpaper and smoke and scabs.

They would be leaving for their mission in five short hours. She tried to keep that in mind when she pushed herself into him, grabbing him with a kiss. When he draped her over the desk and she busied her hands with undoing his trousers, she thought of how she used to tell herself that every time they did this, it would be the last time. Never mind that she never allowed herself to think that it would actually come true – that it would, indeed, be the last time they buried themselves in each other because one of them might actually turn up dead. In her mind, she preferred to think that the way _this_ would end was through voluntary means. They would make that decision. They would stand in front of each other and look each other in the face and end it. For that to happen, they would both still have to be breathing.

She cast a silencing and locking charm on the room before she let her wand go, hearing through the heavy breathing and rustle of clothes as it clattered down to the floor.

She closed her eyes tightly when she felt him empty out into her, some of his warmth running down her thigh. Her muscles felt like taffy. She was damp from where he'd run her mouth over her, making invisible trails, marking up an unseen constellation. Maybe that was some sort of code. Maybe that was, in a sense, goodbye.

They never kissed after the deed was done. This was a silent agreement that had happened along the way, in between the flurry of heated, desperation-fueled fucks against walls and trees and doors. It was a rule. Perhaps the only rule.

So when his mouth hovered around hers afterwards, their ragged breaths in sync, she shut her eyes.

"Don't," she breathed. She didn't know what she meant. _Don't kiss me. Don't go. Don't die._ Maybe she meant them all.

"I won't," he said back. But his mouth didn't move away.

"Good."

ooo

Hermione put all of her energy into avoiding him – which wasn't that difficult, seeing as how he rarely left his office. Even so, just knowing he was a mere twenty seconds walk away, rattled her. Their conversation from that night was now on a mental loop. _You can't get what you want without asking for it. So ask for it._

Much to her dismay, Ginny was becoming a staple at their office. Lunch dates, dinner dates – she would always bring it upon herself to come early and "have a little bit of a chat" with Hermione. She asked about her brother, vented about him, asked about Harry and the bar, and expressed her concerns over his business. Hermione allowed her this, because deep down, she knew it wasn't Ginny's fault that her feelings about Malfoy were now on a second cycle.

That is, until she brought up her love life.

"You aren't seeing anyone, are you, Hermione?" she said. "I mean, at the moment, at least?"

"I'm seeing this desk and my bed," she said without looking up, signing off on a few owls. "And it's a bit new age but I think it's been working out so far."

"Oh, come on, Hermione. I only ask because I think you're letting yourself become devoured by your work. You deserve a little TLC – to be treated like the woman you are." Her eyes sparkled and the corners of her mouth turned upwards like a cat's. "Blaise Zabini has been asking about you."

"Ha!" Hermione said. "No."

"Oh, Hermione – he's better now, I swear. He's seemed to really embrace this whole 'love one another as yourself' thing after the war."

"A really, really firm no."

But Ginny was a train and she was barreling ahead at full-speed. "He saw you at Dean's wedding and he mentioned to me that he was interested. He admires the work that you do."

She snorted. "That's rich, coming from a person with zero work ethic."

She ignored her snarky comment. "He'll be owling you tomorrow to ask you out for dinner," she said, getting up. Hermione saw the door to Malfoy's office open, catching him talk to his secretary before his eyes landed on her office. Or – more particularly, who was in her office. She felt something harden at the base of her throat.

"Really, Hermione. You should give him a chance. Hogwarts is over and we're grown adults now. We should just let bygones be bygones." She shot her a beatific smile. "See you later then!"

Despite herself, she watched Ginny leave with Malfoy. She allowed herself the torture of seeing what it was everybody saw in them. Their graceful, slender figures and their alabaster skin made them a breathtaking couple. But what about the parts underneath? Had Ginny seen his scars? Had she heard him, in his sleep, recite the times and dates of when they had been given to him? Did she know him in precisely the way he didn't want to be known?

As they left, there was a pathetic part of her that wished he would look her way.

He didn't.

ooo

She had a tendency of putting an album on full blast when she was trying not to think too hard about something.

"Well, if this isn't awfully progressive of you, agreeing to go out to dinner with a Slytherin," Harry yelled above the music. He was smirking and leaning up against her doorframe.

She reached over and turned down her music, not having heard him Apparate in, before she glared at him through her mirror, putting on her earrings. Her fingers stumbled over the backings. "Don't start with me, Harry Potter."

She wasn't enjoying this. She hated that she had agreed to it – let alone that it had come with a nudge from Ginny. But what _real_ reason did she have to say no? In the least, she would get a fancy dinner out of it and a justified sense of semi-cynicism.

"I'm not mocking you, Hermione. I'm congratulating you. This is good – baby steps to finally letting bygones be bygones. Truly. I'm proud of you."

"The next person who uses that phrase on me," she muttered, brushing out her hair, "is getting seriously hexed."

"Just try to have a little more self-control when it comes to your eyeballs. You have a tendency of rolling your eyes an awful lot when in the vicinity of ridiculous conversation. Oh, and by the way," he said, "you look nice. Good to see you out of a collared shirt and trousers every once in a while."

"Thank you for your visit," she said. "Now please. Go away. Don't you have a bar to open?"

"I love you, and be home by eleven," he winked. And then with a _Crack!_ he was gone.

Hermione sighed, taking one last look at herself in the mirror. She grabbed her clutch and Apparated to downtown wizarding London.

She appeared in a dimly-lit alley behind a hat shop a few blocks away from the restaurant, and when she stepped out, there was a considerable flow of people strolling on the sidewalks. She glanced at her watch and began to make her way to the restaurant of Blaise's choice, _Fleur de Lys_. She had come by this restaurant before, and remembered the general impression she'd gotten from a peek from the window outside – which was that it wasn't likely she'd ever find herself in such a place. Not on purpose, anyway. It had crystal goblets and fine china with a dress code that cost more than what she made in a year.

And yet here she was.

"Hi," she said to the maître d', a stunning Veela with violet eyes. "I'm Hermione Granger. I'm supposed to be meeting Blaise Zabini."

She tried hard not to think of how wrong the words felt in her mouth. Entirely too self-conscious, like trying to speak in a different language.

The Veela gave her a look-over before nodding. "This way, Miss Granger."

She led her to an intimate table where Blaise was waiting. It was complete with candle lighting and fresh flowers. Blaise's face brightened when he saw her.

"Granger, you look stunning."

Hermione blushed as she took her seat, trying to forget that this was the boy who preferred not to associate with "blood traitors" a few short years ago. "Thank you."

"I've heard a bit about your firm from Draco," he said amicably, as their glasses filled with wine. "It's a shame the Ministry neglected such an asset, but I do believe you're in good hands now. Draco's been looking into acquiring your firm for quite some time now, you know. Ever since the beginning."

Hermione set down her goblet. "I'm sorry, you know this because . . .?"

"I advise Draco's acquisitions. I write up the pros and cons to every company he wants to absorb, underline the bottom line, and he makes the decision from there." He began to chuckle under his breath. "I was there the day the news broke, you know. The day you stormed into his office. I thought we'd have to run an intervention. There was a betting pool going around that we'd find his corpse shortly after you left."

Hermione was nodding. _Draco's been looking into acquiring your firm for quite some time now, you know. Ever since the beginning. _She took a very long sip of wine.

"If I thought I'd get away with it, there would've been," she said, smiling a little wider than natural.

Blaise shook his head, laughing. "You're Hermione Granger. You can get away with anything."

She couldn't believe it. Had she been so romantically distant for so long? Was Blaise Zabini actually _flirting_ with her? She watched in relief as her goblet magically refilled with more wine.

They ordered dinner and extended their conversation beyond business and work. She was careful not to touch on topics that were too sensitive – their time at Hogwarts, for example. It was hard to believe this was the same Blaise Zabini who had looked down on everyone below his status – and even a few of those above him. He was, she dared to say, quite decent and charming. Hermione even noticed the jealous glances of a few of the women around him, their attention caught by the sound of Blaise's laughter.

She allowed herself to feel a little bit of that glow inside her. Was this how it felt like to be validated?

"Listen, Hermione," he said, and she was quite struck at his easy use of her name, "I know this wasn't easy for you – saying yes. I want you to know I haven't forgotten how much of a prick I was back in school. I know this won't even begin to make up for it, but I hope I can show you how much I've changed since then. I'm an enlightened man. I'm grateful you even gave me a chance."

That was when she saw him. Past Blaise, three tables away, looking straight at her, before she caught his gaze and he looked away. And then – as if sensing what was happening – the slender female sitting with him turned her head and looked her way. Hermione felt a tight knot form in her stomach.

It was Draco Malfoy and Pansy Parkinson.

Pansy's dark eyes quickly narrowed into a glare.

Her heart felt like a fist in her chest. "Excuse me for a second, I need to go to the ladies' room," Hermione said, before getting up from her table and heading to the bathrooms.

She was in the middle of rinsing her hands with ice-cold water when the door swung open and Pansy walked in. She took the place at the sink next to her, one hand on her hip.

"Granger," she purred. "Fancy meeting _you_ here."

Hermione rolled her eyes. Right. It was as if she'd walked right into a sodding Slytherin House reunion. "Coincidence, Pansy. It's a bitch."

_A word you should be quite familiar with_, she thought to herself.

"Yes. And yet here we are. And there _you_ are, looking quite cozy with Blaise. Care to explain?"

"I couldn't care _less_ to explain, actually," she said. She turned to her, exasperated with her sudden attentiveness to the wheezing heartbeat that was her love life. "Mind your own business, Pansy. I'm sorry I overheard you and Dean in the garden that night – trust me, I'm not the sort of person to be credited as a 'close family friend' in those Witch Weekly exposes. Your secret's safe with me. So leave me alone."

The tip of Pansy's stiletto was tapping against the marble tile. "Maybe you didn't know this, Granger, but Draco and Blaise are good friends – more than that, they're business partners in one of the most successful postwar companies on this side of the world. I know you're in a pool of your own self-denial, but this is low, even for you."

"Get over yourself, Pansy. I'm not a lost soul for you to herd. And – not that it's any of your business – but _Ginny's_ the one who set this up. Maybe you've heard of her – the _girlfriend_ of the man you're having dinner with?"

"He's helping me with my marriage," she said lowly.

"Somehow I highly doubt that," she snorted.

"_Watch your tongue_," Pansy hissed, and Hermione was momentarily taken aback. "Unlike you, some of us actually still believe in Draco. Face it, Granger: you're stunted. And you aren't fooling anyone, sitting pretty at a table with Blaise. Carry on with him if you're so inclined, but hear this: he'll find you out, sooner or later. In a startling moment of clarity, he'll see how even you can't dig yourself out. You're a fake, Hermione Granger."

Pansy ripped the towel out from the rod and threw it down on the sink in front of her.

"Have a pleasant dinner now," Pansy said, plastering on a smile that bit more than it should have, before exiting the bathroom with one last scoff of disgust.

Hermione stared after her. "Bitch."

ooo

Her dinner with Blaise ended decently enough. It was harder for her to carry on the way they had been – small talk, insert joke or ludicrous story here or there – once she had become aware that only three tables away was the man who had once been an expert at ruining good pairs of underwear and was now the owner of her company. She could feel his eyes on her and it made her feel like she had been lit from the inside. Sitting there, pretending otherwise, she burned.

She hated that he was the only one who could do this to her, even now. He was like a paper cut in-between the fingers of her life – inconvenient, stupid, and messy. Not to mention it made her irrationally angry.

He walked her outside of the restaurant, where they chatted for a few more minutes before saying their goodbyes. Blaise thanked her, and then did something shocking – he kissed her hand.

"It was a pleasure, Hermione. I hope to see more of you," he smiled.

She almost thought that if she willed it hard enough, he could make her heart skip a beat. "Same," was all she said. She watched him disappear with a _Pop!_ and she stood there for a minute, trying to compose herself. She tried to tuck the muddled parts of her back in, at least until she got back home. At least there she could be as miserable and tortured as she needed and the only one who would know it was herself.

She absentmindedly started down the sidewalk. She had just decided to stop by Harry's bar before she went home for the night when she felt something clamp down around her right arm. Before she could yell out for help, she had already been dragged into the nearest alley.

The perpetrator let her go. She whirled around, her wand already between her fingers. "_Immobulus_!"

She missed.

* * *

><p>Please don't forget to review!<p> 


	7. The Bad in Each Other

**A/N**: Quick shout-out to my favorite beta and favorite everything else - Jo/Johnnie Blue! I recently took a gander at my profile and realized that I've spent 9 awesome years as attica and I couldn't have done it without someone to fangirl and swap fanfic recs with. She's been with me since the beginning. She deserves all the love! It's so hard not to get mushy because she's just the bee's knees/cat's pajamas/the best.

This is a relatively short chapter BUT you'll see why it was worth posting. *cackles and runs away into the night*

* * *

><p>Chapter Six<p>

She stared at the man who had forcibly pulled her into a dark alleyway, her heart thudding with the force of a stampede inside her chest.

"_Ronald_!" she hissed. "Are you _insane_? Do you have a death wish? Snatching people, dragging them into alleys? Is there any part of your mind at all where that screams '_suspicious behavior'_?"

"You missed," he said, looking at her wand, confused. "You never miss."

"If you would like me to try again, I promise impeccable aim," she snapped. She took a deep breath, trying to compose herself. Adrenaline was rushing through her veins now and she could feel her fight or flight instinct kicking in. Scowling, she tucked her wand back into her coat pocket. "That was a damn stupid move, Ronald Weasley."

"I'm sorry, I didn't exactly think that part through," he muttered, scratching his ear. "But I was here because Harry let it slip that you were out on a date and I had to come see it for myself. You know, you and Blaise."

"Oh, for Merlin's sake," she said. "It was just dinner – not peace negotiations with the Middle East."

"I know! But I couldn't believe it, not to mention Harry and I may or may not have started a betting pool that you'd end dinner with a nice little hex in his direction – a great deal nastier than the one you missed me with, for sure – and. . ." he trailed off, looking at her expectantly. "Well?"

She gave him a dry look. "How much did you lose?"

His broad shoulders slumped. "Sod it all! Really? He really didn't try anything? I've even got a few knuts on him mentioning 'blood traitors' at least once."

She reminded herself this was exactly why some things were better kept to herself. "He was a perfect gentleman."

Ron frowned. "Hermione. Please. Let's not try to fit a sweater on a pig." He sighed. "Well, I guess I better go pay up. I should've known – betting against Slytherins hasn't exactly been my forte these last few months." He held his arm out to her, albeit begrudgingly. "Bar?"

Hermione sighed, placing her hand on his. "Bar it is."

ooo

_Three and a half years ago_

"Hold still."

She dipped her hand into a jar of medi-ooze she had stolen from the one of the abandoned buildings they'd ransacked for supplies. The thick slime tingled on her fingers while she applied it liberally to his wound.

She watched the rib bones underneath his bruised skin contract when he sucked in a sharp breath. He cursed through gritted teeth, his eyes shut tightly for a second, before he opened them back again and glared at her. She bit back a smile of satisfaction.

"I'm sorry, did that hurt?" she said.

"This stings enough without your fucking sarcasm, Granger."

"Allow me to play the world's smallest violin for you," she said, as she cleaned off her hands and screwed the lid back on the jar. She watched as he sat up, and she reached for the shirt he had discarded to give back to him – but not before she caught another glance of it again. The ugliness of war. The remnants of violence. It was all over him, in layers it seemed like, ranging from black to purple to an angry, crimson red. And then there were the ones on the verge of healing – halos of unsightly yellow where she was sure would never fully heal before he was marked again.

For a second she tried to imagine him without them. The stony, toned expanse of his chest that served as a testament to just how strategic and preordained his genetic profile had been – after all, the matching of old money purebloods was like racehorse breeding. Good family, good genes, good faces. It was no lie that Draco Malfoy was beautiful with the faint echoes of an Adonis link – it was just that this was more or less easy to forget when he was in her face, snarling unpleasant things. Hermione had always been more of a soldier for inner beauty, and she highly doubted this was a concept Malfoy ever took seriously.

"I'm quite the masterpiece, aren't I?" he drawled, when he caught her staring. Flustered, she handed him his shirt, which he snatched back from her. "What's the matter? Am I not as pretty as you imagined?"

Despite herself, she felt her face get hot. "Don't make me laugh, Malfoy. As if I'd spend precious brain cells trying to picture you in any capacity that didn't involve public humiliation or revenge."

"Why don't you show me yours, then?" he said, pulling on his shirt and getting to his feet. He neared her but she didn't back away – this wasn't Hogwarts anymore. He had no power here. No cronies to egg him on, no adoring followers to help him get away with malicious deeds. She would make him realize that, soon enough. It was a level playing field here and she could crush him under her heel like a gnat if she wanted to.

"Huh, Granger?" he taunted. "I've showed you mine, now you show me yours."

"Sure, I'll show you," she said. He froze when the tip of her wand met his throat. "Nice, isn't it?" she smirked. She kept her eyes on him, unwavering, not backing down from the challenge – despite how close she could feel him against her. She could feel the heat of his body roaring against her bloodstream. She fought hard to keep her head from going fuzzy at that.

He wasn't afraid. She blinked at this.

"I'll bet I know exactly where they are," he said to her, lowly. His voice had gone raspy, his eyes mercurial and dark, and she involuntarily sucked in a sharp breath when she felt something against her hip. She was afraid to look down. Her heart was beating itself bloody against her ribcage and she didn't want to look down and prove to herself that it was the tip of his thumb tracing an invisible line from her hipbone that was responsible for it.

Her senses went haywire for a moment, before it hit her and in a delayed surge of awareness she pushed him away, raising the point of her wand to his face. She tingled where he touched her, as if she had just doused herself in scalding hot water. She felt dirty wherever he looked at her – which was everywhere. She didn't like the hunger that simmered in eyes and imagined gouging them out. Not just from him, but from her, from where the fire awakened at the pit of her stomach, that whimpered when he was within arm's length.

"_Don't_," she said, firmly. "This isn't Hogwarts anymore, Malfoy. There's no one to protect you here, so drop the act. You're no good to us if you're dead, and here I've got more friends than you who would be more than happy to lie for me if I happen to find myself with a corpse."

There was a trace of smugness on his face, a faint shine of victory. "Shove your threats in somebody else's face. You're transparent, Granger. And it's pathetic when you pretend otherwise," he sneered.

She flicked her wand. He went flying across the room.

ooo

On Monday morning she entered the office with Blaise's voice still inside her head. Malfoy'd had his eye on her firm since the beginning. Could she let herself wonder why? Aside from the fact that his decision to make her miserable had been far more premeditated than she had originally thought?

It pissed her off. It confused her. Worse, it had caused her little tumor of hope to grow even bigger. She had spent all night trying to detangle the past from present, the delusion from the real, and the desperation from the deserved. She thought of Blaise shattering her assumptions, laughing at her jokes, kissing her hand like a swoon-worthy 18th century gentleman. That was what she was supposed to want. Something rooted in the now, something with the potential for happiness, something _good_.

Instead she had greeted the early morning light thinking of that look she had caught on Malfoy's face when she realized he had known perfectly well what was happening. It had hit her, hard. Irrationally, infuriatingly so. She thought of how she had never met a more insufferable man who had once stood in front of her, broken and bleeding and bruised – a living collage of pain and everything else that comes with war – and called himself a masterpiece.

Determined not to let anyone else see her hidden chaos, she wore these thoughts like an underskin. She said hello to Wendelin and a few other coworkers before heading into her office, taking off her coat and purse. She had just reached for the stack of owls on the corner of her desk when she noticed something else, set perfectly in the middle of the table. She froze. It was a parchment with that blasted gold _M_ on it again.

She opened it. She read it once. Then again.

She went to his office.

She held up the memo. "What the hell is this?"

His look of cool indifference was almost too much for her to handle. "Granger, don't tell me you forgot your reading glasses today."

"_Company fraternizing_?" she said. "You had your _secretary_ write up a memo to remind everyone that _in-company fraternizing_ wasn't allowed?"

He met her eyes dead on, every bit of amusement gone. "After last night, I realized you and your employees could do with a reminder that there are some rules you must abide by, now that I own your firm."

She laughed. "You are so full of shit. I read your sodding handbook cover to cover, and this so-called 'rule' wasn't anywhere in it."

"Well, see, that's the perk of being the boss, Granger," he drawled, sharpness seeping out in his voice. His eyes flashed. "The handbook only means something if I say it means something. If I wanted, I could make a dozen new rules today and a dozen more tomorrow, and you'd still be in here wasting my time fighting me on it, because _you aren't me_. _I_ am me. What _I_ say goes. This is a newly-reinstated rule. Take it seriously. If you don't, it will result in yours or anyone else's termination from this firm. Is that clear?"

"You are completely unbelievable, you know that?" she scoffed, shaking her head. "All of this, just because you _happened_ to see me with Blaise having dinner at a restaurant?"

She noticed that small muscle in his jaw pulse. "_Blaise_," he emphasized with contempt, "works for _me_. He advises me on my acquisitions and I can't afford him to get mixed up with anyone who might be troublesome."

"_Troublesome_? I'm only _troublesome_ because there's no fucking breathing room around you, is there?" she snapped. "You've invaded this firm, my friends, my life. Now you're invading what little semblance of a romantic life I have left, and you're shoving that under the excuse of company policy!"

He stood up. "No, you're _troublesome_ because you seem to have nothing else to do with your day than to march in here, unannounced, and challenge every single decision I've made involving your firm. You are completely hostile and toxic to this work environment, do you know that?"

"_I'm_ the one who's hostile? The one who's toxic?" she echoed, stung. The two words hit her like a wall. Her bones involuntarily quivered. There was a riot in her brain. Suddenly she found it very hard to breathe.

She felt him grab her by the shoulders. She stepped back, her head on a tilting axis. "Don't touch me. Don't you dare." She took a shuddering breath that made her feel brave. "Why her?"

Had she unknowingly walked into some alternate universe where he made sense and she didn't? Where he seemed perfectly okay shagging her best friend's sister and she wanted to jump out of her skin whenever she thought of him? Where she was hopelessly caught in the muggy in-between of wanting him and hating him so passionately, all at the same time?

His eyes flickered over her face. Something broke over the sternness and the barrier he was so good at putting up. She caught its blinding flashes, felt the heat of its glare: longing. Or something an awful lot like it.

"Why do you get to be happy," she asked, wanting to unstick the words from the bones in her throat, "and I don't?"

A beat passed in-between them. She waited for him to say something – anything. Slowly, she began to realize just how bare she'd laid herself. In his office. Over a stupid fucking memo. And just as she felt her sanity returning to her, with the proverbial fog of her volcanic emotional turmoil lifting, along with a certain kind of dread settling in at what she had done and exactly how much of herself she had shown, he had grabbed her in precisely the way she had warned him against doing, and he had kissed her.

Kissed her. Kissed her the way he had always kissed her in the past. Like they were still in the throes of war, as if they were still embarking on suicide missions, as if it – _this_ – could end at any given moment. He kissed her like she was the end-all, be-all. _He kissed her_ and her sad, fumbling brains went nuclear and he blew her willpower away into dust.

He spun her and pushed her against the edge of his desk, his fingers clawing at the buttons of her blouse. He ran his mouth down her neck, his hands greedily searching her. Her eyes, in a moment of sensory overstimulation, closed. Every part of her was humming, every current crackling and alive. He was a fever, and she could die from him right now and she wouldn't notice.

Her eyes jolted open.

"No," she said, struggling to find her voice, shoving him. Malfoy stumbled back, disheveled and out of focus. A brief wave of confusion rippled across his face. "_No_. This isn't happening. This can't happen. I'm-I'm leaving."

She couldn't spend another second in here with him. She quickly magicked the buttons back on her blouse and straightened herself out, before she headed towards his door. She was reeling – from the high came a devastating fall and that was where she was, now. She was suffering from whiplash. Her legs felt numb and she could feel her shame already creeping up around her, like weeds.

"Granger," he said.

She could feel the heaviness of the word. If she cut it open, right here, right now, it would drown them both.

She had heard enough people in her life call her by her name to know that he did things to her name nobody else could. Filled it. Gave it layers. Tangled it up and made her hate it then smoothed it out and made it feel warm and alive. Gave it a heartbeat. Made it worth stopping for.

She kept her hand on the doorknob, her back to him. "It's not like before, Malfoy. It's not just one-off fucks whenever we're sad or lonely or horny or need a distraction. This is different. There are consequences." She opened his door. "I'm leaving. Fire me, if you want."

She grabbed her things from her office, and exited the building.

Outside, turning into the sidewalk, she caught a flash of strawberry hair, heading towards the place she had just left.

* * *

><p>Please review! And I may or may not have written this while listening to "Wrecking Ball" on loop. I can't even feel bad about it. It just sets up such a good atmosphere for some angsty goodness!<p> 


	8. Do the Right Thing

**A/N**: A huge thank you to everyone who's read, reviewed, followed, favorited, told their cats about this fic, etc! I love you guys. This has been a blast.

I have a tendency to listen to songs on loop while I'm writing. This one's was "You Belong to Me" by the Boxer Rebellion. This was also one of my favorite chapters to write, and this fic should be wrapping up soon enough – most likely wrapping up in just one more chapter! So enjoy this people! *cackles and retreats back into cave shadows*

* * *

><p>Chapter Seven<p>

Hermione considered going on vacation. She needed one. She hadn't had one since she and Wendelin had started the firm, so she was rightly due for one. She entertained thoughts of sun rays and warm beaches and tropical drinks with umbrellas in them. Of being away in a place seemingly so removed from reality. She would do some soul-searching. She would get a tan. She would discover a newfound purpose in her life, possibly while swimming with dolphins.

She deserved that, didn't she? As much as any woman who had just made out with her best friend's sister's boyfriend?

She pulled her coat a little tighter around her, afraid to look down at her wristwatch. The sun had gradually shifted downwards and was now gracing its last, meager light for the day, dipping into the ocean. She tried to think of the last time she had been here, and came up blank.

She watched an older couple – also bundled up – taking a stroll on the sand. They weren't physically touching, but their closeness told her they didn't need to be. They moved in sync, in a steady and lingering pace, laughing sometimes, but wholly enraptured in conversation. Hermione watched them with a tight throat, realizing in a flash of bitter self-awareness that she almost couldn't even stomach her own jealousy.

Somebody leaned against the wooden railing beside her. "I thought you'd be here."

She glanced at the man next to her, his raven hair already windswept and chaotic. It took him a few hours, but she should have known somebody would find her. "How'd you know?"

"Ginny went by your office. Heard chatter about how you stormed out, and you weren't in your office, so she asked me to check up on you. I checked about every other place I could think of that you'd possibly go to hide from the world. I hit up nearly every bookstore in wizarding London – all twelve of them, specialty bookstores included," he said. "This was the very last place on my list."

Hermione snorted softly. "I hate the beach."

"I know."

"But there's something calming about being by the sea. Your thoughts don't seem so loud, I guess." She bit the inside of her bottom lip. "So? How am I looking?"

Ten minutes ago she had caught a glance down at herself: coat haphazardly thrown on top of a suit blazer, deep wrinkles in her painstakingly pressed clothes, sand everywhere. She was her own worst nightmare.

He looked at her. "Crazy. But alive. And alive is good."

She laughed quietly. Harry was quiet for a moment. They both watched the couple talking, huddled together.

"Did you quit?"

"Yes. No. I don't know," she sighed. "I just left. Though I'm not sure it matters. I don't know when I'll be going back, and I'm sure Malfoy's even keener on firing me now. To save face, if anything." She took a deep breath, closing her eyes to keep them from burning, but they stung, anyway. "Harry, I. . . feel lost. I mean, I remember the girl I used to be. I was straight lines and due dates and logic. Now I don't know what I am. Nothing's been the same since the war, sure, but I thought I was fine. Then Malfoy showed up."

She kept her eyes to the front of her, the couple blurring out of focus. "When I look at him, my bones shiver. And I know how much power he has over me; I fight it every day. It keeps me up at night, and it makes me a _mean_, _petty_ human being." She let out a shuddering sigh. "He gets inside places a person should never be allowed into. And I don't know how to get him out."

To her, he was a mushroom cloud. Beautiful, terrible, fatal. And fucking inescapable.

His voice was steady, consoling. "You want who you want, Hermione. There's not really any logic behind that."

"If I forgive him, I relinquish control."

Harry laughed, shaking his head. "Hermione, there is no such thing as control. Control is a myth. A widely-accepted one, yes, but still a myth."

"I don't believe that. We make choices, Harry. We live with them. We might not get to control everything that happens to us, but we decide what we do about it. And I've decided on Malfoy. I've decided that not being with him would be the better thing. The _right_ thing."

"Right by who?" he asked, his brow crinkling with the weight of his question. "Because you're haunted, Hermione. And you're going to continue to be haunted until you stop being scared of what it is you actually want."

"He would destroy me." This was a promise. She knew it that first day she had sent him flying across the room. Knew that if she let it happen, if she gave in, it would shatter her.

A breeze picked up around them, sending tiny bits of sand up in the air. She tore her eyes away from the distant figures, turning to look at her friend. She almost felt her heart break at it; the serious way he looked at her, with a face full of waiting. It was so unlike how she felt – all frayed edges, unraveling seams, lost buttons. Unhinged and unsecure, wandering, lost.

"You won't let him."

ooo

She did not go back to work. She slept in, made herself pots of tea, helped Harry at the bar, and began chipping away at the stack of books that had been waiting to be opened in over two years. She had breakfast with her parents. She spent some time with Ron. In her quiet hours, she even went back to the beach to look for that same couple, in a very low-key manner. She didn't know why. Perhaps she was just that desperate to find something real; some kind of reassurance of a love that existed that didn't have to eat you alive.

She responded to the incessant, worried owls and occasional knock on her door with the words "personal time" and "vacation." In her off moments, she dreamt that she would wake up one day and he would be at her doorstep, knowing that she was putting him in shoes he would likely not fill. Still, it comforted her that she still knew the lengths he would not go to keep his pride. She welcomed the reality of an empty doorstep, even if her heart did not.

She was about two weeks in when she found out, for herself, that Draco Malfoy did not understand the concept of doorsteps. He Apparated right into her living room.

It surprised her that she could still talk albeit the fact that she had stopped breathing. "You have three seconds to get out or I'm going to hurl every hex I know at you – and I promise you, I won't miss."

She hated him. Hated every ounce of him with her being. But damn, if he didn't look good standing in her living room, looking at her the way he was, in exactly the way her stupid, inconvenient heart ached for and precisely the way she wished he wouldn't. It seemed highly possible that he existed on this earth solely to make her hate herself. Could God be that cruel?

He was composed, stern. "Come back to work."

She gripped her wand tightly. "No."

"You're being a child, Granger. This hardly professional behavior for someone like you."

"Professional? You want to talk about _professional behavior_?" she scoffed. "Go on. Tell me. Tell me how you're not even sorry. You don't even have a single sorry bone in your body, do you?"

He clenched his jaw. "I'll admit, it didn't happen in the ideal circumstance."

"Try a million leagues away from the ideal circumstance, then you're a little bit closer." She glared at him. She wanted to tear away his regality, his appearance of control. She wanted the level playing field. She wanted him as fucked up and messy and on the brink of sanity as she was.

"You know, she came into the building right after me. What was it? Did you call her in just so you could have a quickie before lunch? But I bet that was before I marched into your office, wasn't it? Before you realized – why have just one when you can have them both?"

He swiftly crossed the room and he grabbed her arm, tightly enough for it to hurt. His eyes were dark and his nostrils flared with rage, his face just inches from hers. "_Don't_," he said warningly. "You're being petty and delusional and it doesn't suit you."

"_Fuck_ what doesn't _suit_ me." She wrenched her arm back, ignoring the shoots of pain she felt as she did so. She turned around, her back to him, trying to compose herself. "I want you," she said lowly, "to _leave_. _Now_."

Silence. She would have thought he actually had left except that she hadn't heard him Disapparate, and for the fact that the air around her still boiled with his presence.

His snarl was rough, angry, passionate. "Do you still want me?"

She stared at the wall in front of her. Her breaths heaved through her lungs. "What?"

"You heard me, Granger," he growled. "Do. You. Still. Want. Me?"

"No," she said, forcefully.

She tried to mean it, she really did. She tried to mean it more than she had ever meant anything in her life. Tried to mean it more than the first time she ever told him she hated him. Tried to mean it more than the first time she told herself she would be happy if she never saw his face ever again. She had never wanted anything more than her life than to mean it, right at this very moment, to him.

"No, I don't want you. It sickens me," she said, "even the _thought_ of wanting you."

He scoffed loudly. "You are the _worst_ liar in the entire goddamn universe, do you know that? It's almost lamentable. Your knees quiver when you lie. And, I bet, if I walked around to the front of you right now, you've got your eyes fixed on one focal point. You aren't blinking. That's what you do when you lie."

She blinked. "I'm not lying," she hissed, whipping around. "And you don't know that because _you don't know me_."

"I've fucked you," he said. He was so close to her and the proximity of him was making her blood boil, all the way up to her brain, where it scattered her thoughts, vaporized them.

"I know what makes you scream. What makes your toes curl. What makes you drag your teeth across my skin. What _melts_ your _bones_. I _know_ you."

"Only you," she said, "would mistake _fucking_ for any kind of real intimacy. _Human to human_ intimacy. You know, the kind that real relationships are built off of. Stuff that was strategically bred out of your bloodline. Stuff," she spat, "that you aren't capable of."

She remembered the night he'd said that to her, years ago. How they'd laughed about it. How she'd secretly envied him because she'd been half-convinced it was true, and she thought about how utterly convenient that was, to never ever feel stuck on someone. To never want someone who you couldn't have. To never yearn for something so wrong and impossible.

He just stood there, looking at her like he hated her, along with something else – and it was that something else that made oxygen so hard to come by. Was it still so unspeakable? Was there a word for it? The way he looked at her, so intensely. He looked at her the way he kissed her.

"You don't get to do this, Malfoy," she said, heatedly. "_You're_ the one who's with Ginny. You don't get to come in here and make me feel like shit. You don't get to be the fucking hero who leads me to an earth-shattering revelation about who I am and what I want, okay? That's not how it works here, in real life. You're with her. So do that with her. But you don't get to have me, too. Not like this."

He began to blur in her vision, brimming her eyes. She blinked, feeling water trail down her face. _That's it. That's all I'm giving him. That's all he gets from me._

"I won't," he told her. "You stupid idiot. I'm not with her anymore. It's only you."

The wall was gone. His face was an open book, just like hers, and she wished she'd never been here to see it, but she was. She could see inside, see the veins pounding underneath every scant word, saw the clumsy translation of everything it was supposed to mean, bottlenecked into so few words.

_It's only you._ How her entire heart pivoted on those words. Stood in complete awe of it. Quivered in fear, and fell face-first.

"I'm sorry," he said, and the apology rang in her ears. "I got good at pretending. I was terrified. Whatever we were, it wasn't over for us. I got good at pretending otherwise. But I'm not going to chase after you, Granger. I'm not going to play games. If you don't want to be with me, if you don't want to end this hellish limbo that we've both been living in, then tell me. But I won't linger, and I won't look back."

Her reply was a stuttering breath. "I don't want to be with you."

He shook his head, eyes shining with vindication. "_Mean it,_ at least."

She tried to muster up the conviction, tried to funnel up every ounce of honesty she could gather in her sad, frozen body. But when she couldn't, when all she could successfully do was fall short of it, she said nothing.

He stepped away from her, eyes minutely lowering in disappointment. "Your firm is well on its way. I've decided that my company no longer needs to have an active presence in your office. I'll be out by Thursday."

With a resounding _Crack!,_ he left.

ooo

She doesn't remember leaving her bed. She remembers staring at walls and ceilings and windows looking out into nothing. Harry must have dropped by at some point, leaving her a plate of food – which she hadn't yet gotten to – and possibly checking her pulse before tending to his own life.

She replayed him in her living room. Replayed him during the war. Replayed him at Hogwarts. Imagined giving into it, mapped it out in her mind – would it lead her off a cliff? It was high risk and yes, she had done plenty of high risk things, but this was different, somehow. This was close to her. This was inside of her. This was all of her.

And he was Malfoy, all or nothing Malfoy. Malfoy who knew every inch of her like the back of his hand. Malfoy who had seen her broken but also victorious and had kissed her in every mood, and said her name like it was the closest he would ever get to praying. Malfoy who made her feel euphoric highs and cataclysmic lows, whose presence put her on edge but only because she was always pulling away. It would be so easy with him. Falling into him would be like gravity.

It was three in the afternoon when she heard a knock at her door. She uncurled herself from her couch and took her time to the door, peeking through to the hallway.

Well, knock her over with a feather.

She hesitantly opened the door, her eyes thinning with suspicion. "Pansy."

The newlywed socialite was wearing a sleek white dress, complete with matching five-inch stilettos. Pansy was nothing if not thorough in her appearances.

"Granger." She barged in, studying her surroundings with certain distaste. "So this is where you live. How quaint."

_Once a snob, always a snob_, she thought to herself. _Even marriage doesn't change that_. "I don't believe I told you where I lived."

"You didn't," she said, turning around. "Not that I would have even asked."

Hermione shook her head. "Why are you here, Thomas?"

There was a smug satisfaction in hearing her new surname. "I heard you quit."

She crossed her arms. "That's completely none of your business. And – it's actually not as clear as that, at the moment."

She looked her over with a hint of disgust palpable enough for Hermione to resent her for. "You're in stained pajamas with wrinkles that go in for miles – I'm pretty sure that's as clear as it gets."

"I'm not going to stand here in my home and be judged," Hermione snapped. "So if you've got something to say, say it. Otherwise I would like to invite you to leave."

Pansy's eyes narrowed at her. "I know when he's gone to see you. He has that look on his face like his favorite Quidditch player has just died. He also starts acting like a moody, misunderstood, teenage boy. Which," she said, "I'm sure you never get to see. Draco's a master at masquerades, Granger. You're lucky if you ever get to see in." She paused, studying her. "And I've known him and his family for years. There's very little he can hide from me – not that he doesn't try, and fail miserably."

"Still not exactly sure why you're here," she said.

"See for yourself," Pansy said. She pulled a large photo out of her hand bag, lifting it up for her to see. "See this? This was supposed to hit the stands two weeks ago. Luckily, Draco's still got a few loyal friends at the Daily Prophet, so he caught a whiff of it before it ever made it. He paid off the _Daily Prophet_ scum that rigged his office with hidden cameras with enough money to buy himself a bloody island. Any guesses on why?"

Hermione stared at the photo. It was that day she had stormed into his office about the memo. The image moved in front of her, and she felt flustered as she watched herself and Draco passionately kissing, his hands moving down to undo the buttons of her blouse.

Her eyes moved back to Pansy. "You can't pass this off as a favor to me, Pansy. Draco had just as much at stake as I did. Ginny would have dumped him, and his reputation—"

"His reputation as a handsome, wealthy, and very eligible man would have stayed perfectly intact," Pansy interrupted. "And you're wrong about the Weasley girl—"

"Her _name_ is _Ginny_," Hermione interjected.

"—whatever her name is," Pansy said, clearly not caring. "They were over before this picture was even taken. And it was a very amicable break-up, from what I've heard."

Hermione shook her head. "No, I saw Ginny when I left, she was—"

"Meeting him for lunch, as _friends_. Some nonsense about needing closure on her part. My point is – think whatever you want to think, Granger, but I'm stating the facts. He wants you – for what ungodly reason, I cannot dream of ever attesting to, but that doesn't change the fact that he is so pathetically in love with you that it's practically ridiculous. He ensured this rat bastard's retirement fund to _save your reputation_, Granger. To keep you on that upper tier of self-righteousness you like to dance on. Frankly, I would have enjoyed seeing you get knocked down a peg or two and watch you stew in your own existentialist crisis that is your head up your own ass. _Draco_ didn't _have_ to do that. He could have let you burn. He would have gotten out of it just fine, but you? I'm not so sure."

She could hardly take all of this in. She wanted to find something in Pansy's face to reason some doubt, to trigger some justified skepticism, but there was nothing. Pansy hid nothing. Pansy was no friend, and she had a tendency of being cruel, but she wasn't exactly a liar.

There was no dark agenda she could think of that would make Pansy Parkinson-Thomas come here, to her median-income flat, and try to convince her to be with Draco Malfoy.

"Why are you doing this?" she asked her, quietly.

Pansy hesitated, but spoke anyway. "In the beginning, he was the only one I told about Dean." She didn't say anymore. Hermione understood. She remembered what Pansy had said about that night she had seen her and Draco at _Fleur de Lys_: _He's helping me with my marriage._

"Make an informed decision." Pansy stuffed the photo back in her purse, walking past Hermione to the door. As she opened it to let herself out, she stopped. "A word of advice, Granger: you've got to forgive yourself. Forgive yourself for wanting him. For entertaining the inconvenient. For being human."

Then Pansy Parkinson-Thomas closed Hermione Granger's flat door behind her with a soft _click_.

* * *

><p>Please review! I do so love hearing from you!<p> 


	9. Welcome to the Family

**A/N**: Okay, I really should stop making promises at when a fic will be ending – I know I said this was supposed to be the last chapter, but that turned out to be a lie. It'll be the next one. That way it'll be ten, a nice round number. Thanks for sticking around and sorry for the long wait!

* * *

><p>Chapter Eight<p>

_Three and a half years ago_

The war ended on New Year's Eve. The reality was that she could have slept for months into the New Year, but instead she was here, after 12 hours of exhaustion-induced sleep, cramped into the largest venue they could find that hadn't been reduced to smoking rubble.

It was a victory party. Everywhere she looked, people's faces were shiny with tears, their hands glued to whatever booze they could find, trying to somehow transform their grief into triumph through some alcoholic alchemy. They would celebrate today. They would sleep for weeks on afterwards. Then they would wake up and try to refamiliarize themselves with the world – reacquaint themselves with routine, with clocks, with walls, with rules. This all the while knowing they would mourn over the dead for the rest of their lives.

After knocking off a few hours of her sleep debt, Hermione had taken a long, glorious shower. After months on the run, she had forgotten how it felt to have hot, running water on her skin. She lathered herself and cried, rubbing herself raw, wishing there was some way she could wash the war off of her completely. But when she looked across the room, past the masses of people moving and laughing, music blaring around them, she was reminded of how there were some things she would never be able to leech out from her pores. Not just the war or the stench of death, but the boy standing ten yards away from her. Him, too.

As she watched him from across the way, she had to tell herself how much she hated the smugness that radiated off of him. Her eyes traced the lines of his body, the curve of his skull, the pink scar peeking out of the rolled sleeve on his arm. Her mind was foggy from thwarted exhaustion and a sufficient intake of whiskey. God, she hated that she now even drank whiskey – worse, that she _liked_ it. Her first taste of it had been from him – from the hot, moist cavern of his tricky little mouth, all of those months ago. During the war, she had always wondered where he'd been able to steal whiskey from, seeing as how they had often found themselves in some of the most godforsaken, forgotten corners of the world, before she'd found his flask. It was easy to figure out then. It had been enchanted never to run out of whiskey, of bloody course.

He had been in conversation with Astoria Greengrass for at least ten minutes now. He had only sipped from his glass of whiskey twice. Hermione stared at them and wondered where in the depths of hell Astoria had crawled out from – along with the other socialites, she reckoned, Astoria had been hiding out. Perhaps in a well-stocked, lush basement six feet under the ground, far away from the destruction. She didn't have the sickly underskin like the rest of them had, from lack of sleep and poor nutrition and mental exhaustion. No scars or physical disfigurements. She was still as ripe as the day she'd bloomed. She had been well taken care of.

Hermione finished up her drink, knocking it back. When she refocused her gaze, she was only slightly jarred to see that Malfoy was now watching her, too, with a low slung smirk on his lips.

"Fucking disgusting prick," she muttered to herself. She turned around to get away, to get some air, when she walked into Ron. She teetered backwards, caught off balance, and he reached out, grabbing her by the waist and pulling her to him to steady her.

When she looked up at his face, he had a lazy, heavy-lidded smile. His breath reeked of alcohol.

"Oi, Hermione. You having fun?"

"I guess so," she said. She glanced down, noticing that he still hadn't let go of her. "You?"

He chuckled and raised his glass in his other hand. "This helps," he said.

"It seems to be," she agreed. A couple squeezed past, nudging them, and caused her and Ron to be pulled even closer together. She stiffened when he leaned in.

"Hey," he said against her ear. "You smell really good."

Suddenly, there was a flash of Malfoy in her mind. Malfoy kissing her neck, telling her how good the dirt smelled on her. She stepped back, pushing her hands against his chest, before he finally let her go. She stumbled backwards into another group of people, causing them to spill their drinks on each other and loudly curse at her.

"Hermione, what's the matter?" he yelled above the music. He looked utterly confused and distraught. "I thought… we…"

There was a white noise in her ears. "Sorry, Ron, I think I need to get some air."

Then she was off. She propelled herself towards the exit, haphazardly pushing through the people, ignoring their complaints. She didn't stop until she was out of the building, and when she was, she pinned herself to the darkest corner and she sat down on the floor and held herself. She needed to breathe. She needed the world to stop spinning. She needed to stop tasting the whiskey on her lips.

She felt sick. She leaned herself over and stuck a finger down her throat, but there was nothing. Two and a half glasses of whiskey and they were in her blood now, locking up her mind, closing off all the exits. Before she knew it, she was sobbing. How she could be so sad and so happy all at once, she couldn't begin to understand.

Perhaps she should have kissed Ron. Could she have allowed herself to get lost in him, the way she let herself with Malfoy? Would it have worked? It was clear Ron loved her, after all. Even through all of this, there were moments when she would catch him looking at her with something that looked a lot like longing.

But no, no, she was in no shape to be loved. Or to love anyone. Not properly. Not yet, not so soon.

By the time Malfoy reached her, she was glad she wasn't crying anymore. The tears had almost dried up. Her face was numb from the cold.

He didn't say anything to her, just brandished his wand and recited a warmth spell over her.

She didn't look at him. Her eyes burned a hole into the distant plains. "Stay away from me."

He didn't move.

"Are you fucking deaf, Malfoy? Go away. Go back to Astoria. I'll bet she'll know how to suck you off just fine. Granted, there won't be the same thrill of Death Eaters coming to execute you at any moment, but I figure your imagination's vivid enough for the both of you."

He laughed. She wanted to hex that laugh. Watch it explode into a million pieces, and blast it away to Mars.

"That's rich, coming from you," he said to her.

"What the fuck do you mean?"

"Weasley getting all handsy with you, is what I mean."

"Oh, fuck off," she spat.

"That's the third time you've said 'fuck.' I must have you truly peeved, don't I, Granger?" He said it so proudly, like a cat licking itself for leftover blood after a hunt – which is why she stood up, stepped in front of him, and slapped him.

He looked at her for a moment, unsurprised, his eyes instantly darkening from rage. Then, before she could lie to herself, she barreled herself into him, fingers burrowing into his hair, and kissed him.

Always quick on his reaction time, he kissed her back. He pinned her against the wall, and she gasped for breath as she undid the button of his trousers. He, on the other hand, hitched up her skirt and ruined another pair of perfectly new panties, tossing it away behind him on the snow. When he slipped inside her, their moans easily swallowed up by the distant noise of the party, she tried to imagine that he was Ron, but it was difficult. Every time he plunged himself inside her and it shook her core, all she could do was remember that it was _him_, _Draco Malfoy_. She had subconsciously memorized every part of him, in every slant of light. Even the feel of him inside her, swollen against her walls, she couldn't separate from the fact that she hated him but deep down, wouldn't have had it any other way.

This was her secret. Buried so deep inside her, she only caught its whisperings when she was allowed to be honest with herself. Add Malfoy into the mix, and it would be her undoing.

When she came, she muffled her cry against his shoulder, her body trembling, her muscles tightening, her bones going slack.

When they were done, he buttoned his trousers and she magically repaired her panties before slipping them back on. She was still slick between her thighs and it made her incredibly self-conscious. He stood in front of her, covering her in case someone happened to pass by, which was something she wondered if he intentionally did.

"Astoria's nothing," he said to her, suddenly, with the emotional depth of a serving platter. "No one."

She looked up at him. If only she had allowed herself to listen to what it was he'd really been trying to tell her, if only she'd ever thought it was actually ever possible. But the truth was, even if she had seen the glimmers of truth behind it, it was still too faint. She was still too jaded by the old world. They fucked each other in dark, forgotten places. Hardly ever looked at each other in public. This was a shameful thing, what they did. Not something worth defending.

If the way he kissed her was in code, she refused to have the key.

"That's too bad," she told him. "She's pretty. You two would fit. In a sickening way, of course, but you'd fit."

He just stared at her, his hair mussed, lips swollen, face half-lit by the distant, filtered lights. "Right. Astoria. And me."

She brushed past him, walking back towards the party. "That's right. The perfect Pureblood girlfriend you've always wanted."

She didn't know how to translate the lump in her throat or the emptiness in her chest, so she didn't.

That night, she didn't see Astoria with Draco again.

ooo

_You've got to forgive yourself. _

_Forgive yourself for wanting him. _

_For entertaining the inconvenient. _

_For being human._

Pansy's voice had become an insufferable echo in her head. How had that happened? Pansy Parkinson (sans the Thomas at the time) had been cruel to her at school, sure, but was never more than a slight annoyance due to her trivial status as an instigating cameo in her life. So how had it become that it was now Pansy's irritatingly wise, crisp, moneyed voice that had become the narration to her undoing?

Hermione downed her third whiskey for the night under the watchful eye of Harry Potter, best friend and local bartender supervising her recent alcoholic binge. He made a few cocktails to a group of scantily-clad women before he gravitated back over to her. He had been wearing the same expression for the past hour, one of half-concern and half-amusement. It was rare for him to see Hermione Granger so disheveled. Or so lost.

"Another, please," she yelled above the cacophony of people, swallowing down the burn in her throat.

"Hermione, you might want to slow down," Harry said, leaning closer to her so that she could hear. "Your liver hasn't suffered this kind of abuse in a few years. Maybe give it some time to catch up?"

"Harry, if I wanted your advice, I'd have asked for it," she said. Down the bar, a group of men burst into laughter. "_Another whiskey_, please."

"Yes, another whiskey for the lady, and I'll have one as well," a deep voice said, as a figure occupied the spot beside her. Harry coolly took in the man next to her, giving him a nod, before setting out to make their drinks.

She must've felt some kind of shock, seeing the fine bone structure of Blaise Zabini's face at a bar like this, much less beaming down at her like she wasn't halfway to getting sloshed – but whatever she felt, it didn't register. This was the intended effect of her recently-instated alcohol consumption.

"Draco told me that you quit the firm," he said, turning to her. "Which is why, I imagine, you haven't received any of my owls. And here I thought you weren't responding because you were completely repulsed by me." Cue the genetically breathtaking smile.

Hermione picked up her fourth whiskey, ignoring the look on Harry's face of suspicion and curiosity as he slid a few beers down the bar. "No, not repulsed," she said. _Just in love with somebody else_. "Did you receive the memo against in-company fraternizing as well?"

"Ah." He set down his glass. "Well, I received a version of it." He paused, before looking up at her again, as if in thought. "Draco can be very territorial when he wants to be."

She snorted. "Yes, well, you'll be happy to know, then, that he's shit and left the pot," she said. "He left on Thursday. Packed up his shiny little office and his birdlike secretary and went back to headquarters. I'd be off the moon about it, too, if I hadn't made the rash decision of termination."

"Not quite, Granger. Draco made it quite clear you could have your job back at any time."

Hermione snorted. "Right. Ha, ha. Very funny, Blaise."

Blaise was shaking his head. "I'm serious. He can be cruel, sure, but not heartless. Have a talk with your associate Wendelin if you don't believe me."

Hermione stared at him, and he took a long sip of his drink, one part of his mouth quirked up in a smile. "What I don't understand is you seem to have this perception of Draco that is completely contrary to the way you look at him."

She turned away. Her tone was sharp. "Don't."

"I get it. It's none of my business. However, I came to see you because I wanted to tell you," he said, his voice lowering to a gentlemanly murmur, "if things don't work out with Draco, and you'd like a night out being admired by someone like me, feel free to send me an owl." He stood up, giving her a muted smile. "You have a good night, Hermione."

He slapped down a few Galleons on the counter and nodded to Harry. "For the lady's drinks, for the rest of the night."

Then both Hermione and Harry watched as his broad shoulders disappeared through the crowd, barely noticing the awestruck gazes of the women he passed.

"Generous," Harry said, nodding to the path he had cleared. He jingled the Galleons in his hands before he pocketed them. "He definitely left enough to get you nice and wasted for about three uninterrupted days. A real gentleman, that one." He disposed of Blaise's empty glass behind the bar. "Didn't even stick around to carry you home like I'm predicting we'll have to."

"Don't worry," she said. "I don't intend to get sloppy."

Harry chuckled. "Nobody ever does."

Hermione opened her mouth to protest when she caught a flash of strawberry hair from the corner of her eye, and suddenly, Ginny Weasley was beside her, looking effortlessly stunning in a pair of strategically well-fitting jeans and a silk top. She was radiant and beaming, leaning forward with her elbows on the bar.

Hermione took a long drink.

"Harry, was that Blaise Zabini I just saw coming out of your bar?" she asked.

"Funnily enough, yes."

"Doesn't he know this is the lions' den?" Ginny said, before they laughed, and Harry began making her usual: a kind of sugary, colorful cocktail that Hermione had never had the stomach for.

"Hermione, what's the occasion?" she asked her. "You're certainly looking. . . quite glazed."

She had been avoiding Ginny like the plague. This was because despite Pansy's insistences that there had been no infidelity on anyone's part, she still felt guilty – even with the fact that Ginny was known for dating her fair share of successful, handsome men.

"I'm celebrating my unemployment," she said, "and the end of Malfoy's tyranny." Hermione quickly excused herself from the bar, telling her that she just needed some air. This was becoming increasingly true, as it seemed the crowd had multiplied tenfold since she'd last checked, and everywhere she turned there was a body trying to flag down one of their four bartenders for a drink. She pushed through them all and exited through the side door.

She found herself in a damp alley. There was a dying light on the wall a few yards from her, flickering and buzzing pathetically.

As she leaned against the wall, trying to steady her swimming thoughts, a small voice pushed itself to the forefront. It wondered where Malfoy was, what he was doing, and if he was completely done with her, like he said he would be. If he could so easily control his thoughts from wandering over to her with a will power she did not possess. If he was in his obscenely large manor now, reclined in a mahogany office, drinking whiskey, regretting her. Or perhaps he was fucking the brains out of some new woman on his silk sheets, as if meaningless sex was ever the thing to deter inconvenient longings.

And she was here, freezing her tits off in the alley of her best friend's bar. If she hadn't spent the past two weeks in her pajamas reading bad crime novels, she would have claimed this as her new low.

She went home soon after. Harry pocketed the rest of Blaise's generous charity and – much to her chagrin – had pre-arranged a Portkey for her to get home. "The last thing we need is you getting splinched," he said, as he pointed over to a box of beer coasters in the corner. "Sorry I couldn't make it anything fancier, like Malfoy's decapitated head."

She stumbled into bed, but not before she rummaged through her drawers looking for the owls he had sent her, years ago. It was proof that she also had a habit of lingering in his thoughts. Or, at least, that she'd done so, once upon a time.

The first said only one word:

_Granger._

Then the second, sent just minutes after the first:

_Talk to me._

How funny that last owl was, she thought. She and Malfoy were so specifically adept at words – meaning: the only time they ever used words was if they wanted to hurt each other.

ooo

The morning she owled Wendelin to ask exactly what the status of her employment was – Blaise had been right; Malfoy had marked her off as 'on vacation' and due back anytime she wanted –, she lay in bed and thought about Malfoy. Truthfully, she did this a lot. In some ironic way, she missed him. Except maybe it wasn't so ironic. Maybe it just was what it was, and she was out of reasons to pretend otherwise.

She had a pile of crumpled owls in her rubbish bin. Some had been the result of a late night drink and a sloppy bout of bravery, and some she had penned in the light of early day, with a cup of tea in the other hand. She'd yet to send any of them, but they all seemed to evoke the same sentiment, which was that she wished she could be the girl who could be with him now. The girl who even knew what that would look like. Something great, she imagined. Some days she could get lost in her own fantasies of how it would truly be like if they had agreed to start again on neutral grounds, to unfetter themselves from the murky, charged past.

Mostly, she fantasized how it would be like to kiss him in public. To hold his hand in the street. To see for herself how his eyes could look beneath a startling blue sky, under the warm, shining sun. To talk and not mean to hurt each other, for once.

Someday she would be that girl. But she had to be this girl first. And as this girl, she had to let go, cut the wires, give in. She had to slay the part of her that still had guilt as a nightly bedfellow, and the self-loathing she'd carried on from the war. She had to turn her heart inside-out.

She had to figure out how to let the light back in.

ooo

She eventually mopped herself up, readjusted her backbone, and went back to work. Malfoy's office was gone by then, and so had any other trace of him, aside from the large, silver M hanging in front of their building. After an awkward reunion with Wendelin and a lengthy meeting about what she had missed during her "vacation," she went back to doing what she did best: micro-managing.

At least until she received a mysterious owl graced with the Parkinson-Thomas seal with the address of a nearby café, a time, and two words: _Be there_.

Why, exactly, she decided to go, despite the fact that it was _Pansy_ and she was an insufferable meddler, she couldn't say – except that Hermione was here now, having a cup of coffee, waiting for a flash of a pristine ivory pantsuit.

She was just brushing off the evidence of a breakfast croissant when Pansy sat down in front of her.

She greeted her with an icy look-over. "Good. You're here."

"Thomas," Hermione said exasperatedly. She noted the way Pansy's eyes narrowed at the crumbs on the table. "What's this about?"

"I see you're back at work, finally," Pansy said. "The whole unemployment look didn't suit you. Neither did the smell."

Hermione rolled her eyes. "Look, I haven't got much time to sit here and listen to your tiny jabs about my life. I've got a pile of work on my desk with my name on it. So cut to the chase, please."

"Fine." Pansy pursed her lips, and then unpursed them. "I'm pregnant."

Hermione blinked. She then squinted at her noticeably flat stomach beneath her form-fitting white dress, trying to discern if this was all some big joke.

"Knock it off," Pansy snapped, in a low voice. "I cast an illusion spell so the bloody paps keep their nose out of it. I'm not an idiot."

"_You_? _Pregnant_?" Hermione repeated, unable to wrap her mind around it. What would this sodding baby look like? Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde? "That's _allowed_? As in, in the grand scheme of the universe, _you_ are allowed to procreate?"

"Oh shut up, Granger. I wasn't ecstatic about this meeting, either. But this is marriage, or so I think it is."

"I still have no idea—"

"_Dean_," she said slowly, talking to her as if she were stupid, "wants _you_ to be _godmother_."

Hermione stared at her. Had the world just begun to rotate backwards?

"To your unborn child?"

"No, to our baby mandrake – yes, to our fucking unborn child," she snapped.

"But why me?" she stammered. "Why not Ginny, or one of your lot? You must have some snobby relative that'll visit once every year and teach the baby averse morals."

"Don't get me started, all right? I've already had my pick."

It slowly dawned on her, then. She swallowed down the acid rising from her throat. "Right. Let me guess – Malfoy."

There was a hint of pride in Pansy's eyes at the fact before she seemed to realize, yet again, just exactly why she had summoned Hermione here. "Just say yes, for Merlin's sake. It's just a baby. You'll come to the birth and then visit once every year to pretend to bond with it."

"Wait a minute," she said. "Come to the _what_?"

"Listen, Dean said you're his first and only choice," Pansy continued, firmly. "He said you're one of the best people he knows. Highly debatable, of course, but it's his choice. And… I love him, which is why I sacrificed my morning to sit here with you – not to mention shave off a good portion of my dignity – and ask. Frankly, I think he's testing me. He thinks I'm a snob."

"Except you're not really asking, are you?" Hermione scoffed. "In our entire conversation, you haven't asked me a single thing."

She shrugged, pleased with herself. "Asking isn't really my style."

"Right," Hermione said. "You entitled lot simply aren't born with that kind of capability." She sighed, watching Pansy's face. "Fine. I'll be godmother. If only as a favor to Dean so that his child doesn't grow up to be an unfeeling monster."

For a fleeting second, Pansy almost smiled. This was before, of course, Pansy suddenly rose to her feet, as if she couldn't stand to be seen with her another second. "Dean will be glad to hear it. See you then."

She was just turning away when Hermione called her back. "Pansy, wait."

Pansy turned her head, one dark eyebrow quirked. A waiter passed by them, giving a double-look, as if she and Pansy having any kind of social tie was the strangest thing he'd seen all morning.

"How is he?" she asked. "I mean, have you seen him?"

It had been several weeks and she hadn't seen him in the papers. This was her feeble attempt at trying to make sure he was still alive.

"I did, when I asked him to be godfather," she said, bristling only slightly. "He looked the same as he always did. Works too hard, drinks alone too much. But he's not the one who was in his pajamas for three weeks."

"Two weeks," Hermione corrected under her breath. "Does he know that Dean wanted me to be godmother?"

"I might have mentioned it, in passing." She shifted her bag on her shoulder, her tone softening just the slightest bit. "Goodbye, Granger."

It was only as she walked away that Hermione realized she'd forgotten to ask just how far along Pansy Parkinson-Thomas was.

"Godmother," she sighed, leaning back on her chair. "Shit."

* * *

><p>Thoughts? Please review!<p> 


End file.
